In Spain, over the last few years we have witnessed a number of changes in the structure and denomination of our faculties of medicine, as a result of the disappearance of schools and the homogenisation of degree courses (formerly, diplomas and licenciaturas). We have gone from the traditional denomination and structure of faculties of medicine we have been familiar with up until now to the appearance of faculties of medicine and health sciences, faculties of the health sciences, faculties of medicine and nursing, faculties of medicine, nursing and physiotherapy, faculties of medicine and dentistry, etc. These changes have been basically determined by economic reasons and the need for streamlining. As a result, in many faculties, different health science degrees such as medicine, nursing, dentistry, physiotherapy, etc. are taught under the umbrella of a single centre. Yet, more often than not the different degree courses are taught individually, each with their own curricular pathways and without any kind of connection among them.

The fact that students from different health science degrees coincide in the same space or spaces that are close to one another opens up the door to the possibility, and also the necessity, of introducing multiprofessional education experiences. Multiprofessional education has been defined by the WHO as the ’the process by which a group of students or workers from the health-related occupations with different backgrounds learn together during certain periods of their education, with interaction as the important goal, to collaborate in providing promotive, preventive, curative, rehabilitative, and other health-related services’.

Today we must be aware of the fact that health professionals no longer work individually, but instead they do so as members of multiprofessional teams. The need to work more efficiently as a team makes it necessary to possess a series of competences and knowledge of other professional roles that could be acquired more efficiently through multiprofessional education activities.

Multiprofessional education entails a number of advantages in the process of training health science undergraduates, including: the development of students’ capacity to collaborate by sharing theoretical and practical knowledge, empowering students to acquire the competence for teamwork that they need to solve top priority health problems, ensuring that the curricula do not form watertight compartments, preventing the development of a corporate mentality (which is a factor leading to resistance against professional collaboration), helping professionals and students to communicate with one another more easily, establishing and promoting new functions and competences, responsibilities and sectors of interest, and attempting to guarantee coherence and avoid contradictions among different curricula [¹].

Moreover, multiprofessional education would help to identify the key principles that enable efficient multiprofessional work, facilitate the relationship with the patient, foster reflection upon the opportunities and limitations produced by the perceptions that health professionals have about each other, and promote the evaluation of models of collaboration between health and different social care professions [¹,²].

In view of all the foregoing, and bearing in mind our current situation, it would be highly advisable that our faculties of health sciences promote pilot trials which allow the possibilities of implementing multiprofessional education activities to be evaluated.

For multiprofessional education to be efficient it is necessary to take into account the curricular aims or competences to be acquired in common and the learning contexts and strategies to be used [³]. Competences that should be taken into consideration include, among others, certain basic knowledge that is common to all health science professions, skills for communication between professionals, the development of professional values, ethics, an understanding of the roles and expectations of other healthcare professions, the capacity to work in teams, and certain procedures and techniques.

As regards the learning environments and contexts in which multiprofessional education can be carried out, we might consider the periods of basic or preclinical training, in which core aspects that are common to all the healthcare professions could be delivered, and the clinical periods in all the environments, ranging from those simulated in the skills laboratory [⁴] to the hospital setting, as well as periods spent in primary care and community healthcare.

With regard to strategies, appropriate methods would be holding joint seminars on topics of common interest, specific workshops for certain skills such as communication and other technical abilities, working in small groups, some theoretical classes and, more especially, learning activities based on problem solving, which is acknowledged as one of the best strategies for multiprofessional education [⁵].

With respect to the implementation in our own context, we are not thinking about promoting the development of common curricula, which entails important difficulties, but rather in identifying contents and competences that could be taught jointly. Additionally, it would be necessary to establish the most suitable educational environments for this kind of learning in each institution.

Without a doubt, the current structure of the new faculties of medicine offers the ideal ground to try to establish multiprofessional education and we should know how to make the most of this opportunity.