A message from Gerri Lamb and Mary Mauldin, the inaugural Nexus Distinguished Scholars
On April 18, we will be launching the first in a series of the Distinguished Scholars webinars on Taking Action on Tough Questions. We will be joined by Dr. Christine Arenson and Dr. Barbara Brandt, Director and Founding Director of the National Center. We’ve asked these two leaders to share their thoughts about key questions and issues we must address to advance the Nexus and sustain the many successes we’ve had in interprofessional practice and education in the last decade.
For those whom attended Summit 2022, you may remember the IPE Version 5.0 plenary in which Dr. Brandt threw down the gauntlet and challenged everyone in the audience – both in person and virtual – to seriously examine the history of interprofessional practice and education. After her own in-depth review of several decades of writing and ground-breaking work, she identified three issues she suggested we must discuss and tackle to grow and sustain. With apologies to Dr. Brandt for our taking quite a bit of poetic license in framing these three issues, we call them the 3 “Rs”:
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Relevance: When we think about the Nexus, how sure are we that priorities and incentives for interprofessional practice and education are aligned between our academic and health care organizations? Who cares anyway??
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Reach: How much have the advances in the interprofessional professional community influenced people who make decisions about health care or the people served in our health care system? In Dr. Brandt’s words, are we at the right tables? If not, why not?
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Research: What are the gaps in theory and research holding interprofessional practice and education from achieving Relevance and Reach? How ready are we to make the case that interprofessional practice and education are integral to quality health care and achieving the Triple or Quadruple Aim?
In the first webinar, we plan to push the dialogue on these questions and others. Paul Cleary, a wonderful health services researcher, once said that most of what we care about can be asked in three questions, “So what?” “Compared to What” and “What’s Next?” As Nexus Distinguished Scholars, we are most interested in the “so what” and “what next”. We have spent most of our careers trying to advance interprofessional practice and education and supporting colleagues who have been part of these efforts. We want to see them thrive – sooner than later, please. We’re getting up in age.
Even though the webinar has passed, we continue to be interested in your ideas!
We want to know the questions and issues about interprofessional practice and education that keep you up at night, that are creating barriers for you in your work – whether in teaching, practice, administration, policy-making or all of the above. We do not assume we know your concerns – so please tell us. We will summarize them and make them part of the dialogue at this first webinar with these two key leaders and in future webinars where we plan to invite different panelists from different stakeholder groups to talk about TAKING ACTION.