The patient is the teacher: ambulatory patient-centred student-based interprofessional education where the patient is the teacher who improves patient care outcomes.

The patient's role as the key to medical student education was enunciated by Osler in 1903 and remains central to the broader imperative of interprofessional education. Interprofessional education needs to progress from the patient's passive bedside or office role to assume a more active and primary role by his/her participation as the teacher, immersed in student education. To date, the achievements in interprofessional education have been limited, but ambulatory patient-centred learning opportunities involving direct student to patient dialogues and mixed health professional student engagement with patients as teachers are emerging within various interprofessional student clinic formats. There is good evidence that such approaches lead to actual improvements in patient outcomes.