Educating the educators from an interprofessional perspective: A Master's program for health professional educators

Abstract

Preparing health professionals for educator roles is increasingly critical as healthcare becomes more complex, and learners more diverse. This is especially true with interprofessional education and collaborative practice. Master's of education programs can address the need to ensure educators possess the pedagogical expertise to support pre-licensure and post-graduate learners or provide education to patients and their families. However, programs typically focus on enhancing educators' skills and knowledge in medical or nursing education through the scholarship of teaching and learning thus reinforcing the professional silos often experienced in pre-licensure education. A Master of Education for Health Sciences Education program was developed and designed with an interprofessional perspective to intentionally be inclusive of all health professions. A program evaluation demonstrated the program's many strengths and highlighted areas for improvement. The outcomes of the evaluation and comparison to quality assurance standards for master's programs (Tekian and Taylor, 2017) ⁹ were synthesized into lessons learned and recommendations for others interested in creating a graduate program for health professional educators.