Interprofessional Education Programs

This course focusing on humane and thoughtful consideration towards others is required for all enrolled students, including transfer students. The philosophy behind "Collaboration and Integration" is learned in this course.
"Humane" is intentionally included in the wording because "humane" care (consideration) is particularly needed in the health and social services fields.
Furthermore, the SPU president and faculty from each department are jointly responsible for the Collaboration and Integration courses. Lectures delivered by faculty of different departments develop well-rounded indivisuals.

Human Care Field Activities is part of SPU's core curriculum in which students directly interact with people who need assistance, people who provide assistance and team members in the fields of health and social services. Through teams formed across teams and learning in the fields of practice, the field activities aim to develop: (1) The attitude to objectivity examine student's own ways of interacting with others; (2) The attitude to cooperate with group members; (3) The attitude to pay attention towards the needs of people requiring assistance and the roles of service providers; and (4) The attitude to try to understand diverse values and perspectives.
The field activities run for four consecutive days at the end of the first semester of freshman year for all SPU students, with cooperation from about 80 institutions and hospitals within and outside the prefecture.

IPW Theory is a course in which students learn the basic approaches and skills required in order for different professions in the health and social services and educational fields to assist patients and users as teams. The course will advance into IPW Practice in the junior year and IPW Practicum in the senior.
Students will acquire understanding towards their aspiring profession and relevant professions, as well as basic skills for team work. Together with learning these approaches and theories in lectures, students learn from experience with team work by forming groups with students from different departments.
With Human Care Theory (sharing) and Human Care Field Activities (discovering) as the foundations, IPW Theory (respecting) is a Health and Social Services course alongside IPW Practice (achieving consensus) and IPW Practicum (creating) to improve the skills necessary for collaboration and integration as students progress in year level.

IPW Practice, carried out in teams from a mix of departments, lets students learn the capabilities required in IPW such as conflicts (uneasiness and challenges) and consensus that are important in the understanding of and collaboration with different professions through mock problem-solving and case studies on health, social services and education.
The course aims to have students experience the problem-solving processes and significance of team formation by integrating learnings from IPW courses (Human Care Theory, Human Care Field Activities, IPW Theory), or namely the values, attitudes and skills that support IPW in the health, social services and educational fields. Students will go on to IPW Practicum in their senior year as applications of their learnings through IPW acquired from reflections outputted in teams and individually.

IPW Practicum is a required course acting as a wrap-up in practicing collaboration and integration. Students listen to patients and employees on-site in hospitals and nursing facilities, and discuss ideal care for users in teams. While leveraging the specialized knowledge acquired through the four years at SPU, students acquire practical capabilities to adjust approaches and policies in various professions by focusing on the requests of patients. Like Human Care Field Activities, IPW Practicum also involves learning in cross-departmental teams, but is drastically different in that students from other universities also join. Therefore, the course is about students from very different backgrounds learning together on-site. No other university has a practicum course that is part of the core curriculum for all departments, is cross-departmental and also collaborates with other universities. It is also unique in that the number of hospitals and institutions involved, as well as the number of students, are significant.