Modern medicine is "team-based medicine" that is provided collectively by multiple professionals, including doctors, nurses, medical technologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, pharmacists and so on.

Each professional, after being trained under each faculty, department, major, course, starts to work with highly specialized knowledge and skills. However, there is no inter-professional experience or educational program provided under the traditional curriculum for undergraduate medical education.

In Showa Campus of Gunma University, the Faculty of Medicine has the School of Medicine, School of Health Sciences, and University Hospital, and all of them are located close to each other. The Faculty of Medicine pursues team-based medicine to provide holistic and patient-centered medical services. Under the practice of holistic medicine, hospital staff provides comprehensive care for a variety of patient needs, such as social, financial, mental and emotional needs, in addition to medical concerns, and helps patients play a central role in determining the course of treatment.

The Program of "Interprofessional Education for Comprehensive Undergraduate Training among Students in Health Sciences and Medicine" provides opportunities for undergraduate students to learn from each other across departments, majors, and courses under a favorable environment, and understand the roles and responsibilities of their own and other professions. In this manner, undergraduate students will be better prepared to participate in providing team-based medicine. This Program, built on the long-term efforts and achievements of the Faculty of Medicine, is definitely expected to achieve great successes.

To fulfill "Gakushi ryoku", scholastic competency expected of the graduates of the Faculty of Medicine, it is vital to foster the following: 1) Knowledge: understanding the diverse factors in the world, such as societies, politics, cultures, and natural environments, and using the knowledge to act appropriately as a healthcare worker, 2) Skills: language skills, skills to gather and analyze information obtained through the Internet and by other means, and skills to identify problems, 3) Attitude: communication skills, teamwork skills, and leadership required for collaboration between various healthcare professionals, and 4) Creative thinking: decision-making skills and ability to take action to flexibly handle problems. We have provided "interprofessional education", which is said to form the basis of the scholastic competency expected of the graduates of the Faculty of Medicine and contribute to competence concerning attitudes for over 10 years. In the past, we have launched a project across the whole of the Faculty of Medicine by also having students from the School of Medicine participate in the "interprofessional education", established the inter-university network "Japan Interprofessional Working and Education Network: JIPWEN ", and began collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) through this network.

The lack of healthcare workers worldwide is a serious problem requiring immediate attention. The United Nations, in its Millennium Development Goals (/MDGs), set a goal to take measures against serious infectious diseases, such as AIDS and malaria as well as to reduce the child and perinatal mortality rates. Training healthcare workers is an urgent necessity to achieve such goals and is even directly linked to survival in many Asian and African countries. Under such circumstances, the WHO report in 2006 led to the realization that interprofessional work is vital for effectively employing healthcare workers, and the importance of interprofessional education was brought to the fore.

With such an international situation, we evaluate the educational effects of attitudes fostered through "interprofessional education" and report our findings as objective evidence. On the other hand, we also promote the active interaction of our students and young teachers with the WHO and foreign universities and support their active participation in the hosting of international academic conferences on medical education so as to enrich their knowledge and skills with international perspectives. Further, we aim to foster their creative thinking by having them face many challenges, mistakes, and successes during their new experiences.

By applying "interprofessional education" as a subject requiring active participation in collaborative works with international societies, at Gunma University Faculty of Medicine, we hope to improve our students' scholastic competency and our young teachers' skills to foster improved performance.