17: REFLECTIVE RESPONSE 1 ■ 407they are not the same thing. Working side by side is not the same as trying to actively
understand another profession.
At the core, IPE and practice helps us not only learn with, from, and about other
professions, but also helps us to be able to actively express to members of other profes-
sions that their knowledge, skills, and worldviews matter to us. Mattering is the active
process of expressing that we understand and accept others and that what they think
and believe are important to us (Charles & Alexander, 2014b). This is a critical point that
is rarely discussed with regard to our interactions with others. Feeling that “we matter
to others” is key in decreasing interprofessional conflicts. In the absence of this sense of
mattering, there is a high likelihood of territorial conflict between professions and per-
sonal conflict between individuals. Mattering is a way of validating other professions
and, in turn, feeling validated by them.
Novak falls into the same trap that others do when writing in this area. She identi-
fies where we should be going without really identifying why we struggle to get there.
What is lacking from the chapter is a clear sense of how our professional training can
hold us in place rather than helping us to develop new ways of being. Without a serious
examination of our role in contributing to the current state of affairs, we risk chang-
ing only how we talk about collaboration and partnership rather than actually helping
develop new ways of working with others. My response to Novak focuses on why we
need to pay close attention to the points she raises regarding interprofessional practice
and service learning, while, at the same time, calling for even further examination of not
where we can go, but why we are not getting there.
Perhaps the best place to start in this response is to provide an overview of how we
develop our identity as professionals. While a great deal has been written on the edu-
cation of health care professionals, little attention has been paid to our individual iden-
tity development as professionals (Charles & Alexander 2014a; Charles, Bainbridge, &
Gilbert, 2010). It is our sense of “who we are” rather than just “what we know” that
dictates how we interact with each other and with service users within the health care
environment. Humans change over time. This change is dependent on how we cre-
ate meaning and form ideas about ourselves and our environment (Alexander, 2007;
Valsiner, 2000). It is this process of determining meaning in interpersonal interactions
that strongly influences who we become as individuals and professionals and, in turn,
continues to influence how we relate to members of our own profession, other profes-
sionals, and the people for whom we provide services.
This development of “who we become” as a member of a profession begins with
our earliest entry level training. While still under the influence of the broader context
of society and personal relationships outside of their college or university, students are
immersed in both academic and practice settings during the course of their professional
training. Simply put, “who we become” in the course of our training is in part dictated
by the environment in which we are trained and in part by the people with whom we
interact. This is the foundation of most professional training. For example, if as nursing
students we spend our time in our training primarily interacting with other nursing
students, then as nurses we likely assume the general values, attitudes, and knowledge
modeled for us daily. In fact, if we do not incorporate these values, attitudes, and knowl-
edge, then there is a good chance that we will not complete our training.
As we progress through our entry- level training, we increasingly see the world
from the viewpoint of our profession. This signals that we are becoming a member of
our profession. It is easy to begin to think that the way our profession sees the world
is the only “true” way to view it. This uniprofessional focus ensures the development
of a worldview that has traditionally been seen as being appropriate to our profession.
However, the lack of systematic exposure to other professions means that we do not