Multidisciplinary teams delivering person-centred care are a central feature of primary healthcare reforms in Australia.

The context for this paper is the 2022 Strengthening Medicare Taskforce Report and its recommendation to strengthen interprofessional education and training programs to support multidisciplinary teams in general practice. The RACGP supports “multidisciplinary teams in general practice that are responsive to local needs, as long as patients are accessing centrally coordinated care via their general practice.”

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, general practice training has shifted to a hybrid model of face-to-face and online formats.

This presents challenges and opportunities for interprofessional education and training, at the vocational level and for continuing professional development in general practice.

(Note that the terms ‘multidisciplinary’ and ‘interprofessional’ are often used interchangeably. In this paper, we use ‘multidisciplinary’ to describe teams and care, and ‘interprofessional’ for education and training.)

We reviewed three Tasmanian projects that focused on aspects of interprofessional education and training:

* Best practice for interprofessional training for collaborative primary healthcare. An expert panel reached consensus on the capabilities needed for interprofessional learning and how to do it. The panel needed to know more about why we are doing it and where it could be most effective.

* An in-practice emergency simulation pilot. This project focussed on interprofessional learning within multidisciplinary teams collocated in general practices. The project found that a common goal facilitated positive engagement of learners and stimulated discussion about changes in teaching within the practices.

* An online dementia care training and education program developed for GPs and practice nurses. The content incorporated team approaches to identification, diagnosis and management of patients with dementia to promote shared decision-making behaviours. Evaluation demonstrated some early changes in clinical management of dementia in the practices.

Multidisciplinary teams in general practice vary according to practice size and location, and the collocation of teams and services. We discussed how a clinical-training space model can account for this context.

The model incorporated online and face-to-face spaces and aligns primary healthcare professionals, patients, practices/teaching organisations, educators and technology through facilitation and feedback channels.

The model provided a way to analyse interprofessional learning for collaborative practice. However, there are some challenges:

* How can patients be integrated into the collaborative healthcare team?

* How can new technologies be adapted for interprofessional training and education in general practice?

* How do we demonstrate primary healthcare outcomes from interprofessional training and education interventions?

These are questions for further research.