We value or devalue other professions in the adjectives that we employ to describe them, and the stereotypes to which we resort, as contributors to this book will have been well aware. Readers and writers alike, we are all products of professionalisation, a process as subtle as it can be subversive when it invites invidious comparisons between ‘them’ and ‘us’. Explanations for the relative value that we accord the professions are as many as they are varied. They are rooted in gender, social class, schooling and subsequent professional education, including the relative status of the universities in which it is provided, in the length of their courses, in the level of their awards, in the emphases in curricula on the sciences and the humanities and on specialist and generalist practice.

Differences such as these are diminishing in country after country. The number of men and women entering the health professions is becoming more evenly balanced. Doors are opening for students from disadvantaged backgrounds to enter the more prestigious professions via access programmes. Profession-specific colleges are being merged into the newer universities which are closing the academic gap with the older universities. Professional awards are evening up as more professions establish graduate entry and marriages are made between scientific and humanitarian curricula.

Yet prejudice persists between professions. Educational engineering is not enough; interprofessional education makes good the shortfall. It provides a level playing field for the learners, where the centre forward is neither more nor less valued than the half back or the goalkeeper. It creates opportunities where students entering each of the health professions learn to rely on the others as together they appraise the values, insights and expertise that each brings to perform its allotted role, relinquishing preconceptions and stereotypes when necessary.