Today the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation shared the story of 16 nursing schools, working with the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education, to develop new community-based clinical programs for their graduate and advanced practice nursing students to learn to work in interprofessional teams.

The Macy Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and John A. Hartford Foundation envisioned the initiative based upon the 2010 Institute of Medicine Future of Nursing report. They funded the National Center to provide new educational opportunities for nursing and other health professions students out in the community.

The goal of the initiative is for health and other professional schools, with a history of collaboration, to work together with a community partner and the individuals and families that it serves to develop innovative, creative and sustainable interprofessional clinical initiatives that accelerate their existing interprofessional education. Each school has a nurse leader who is the principal investigator charged with building an interprofessional team, which includes members of the community to help design and implement their project.

The full article and details of projects are available on the Macy website.

Details of the Accelerating Initiative, along with executive summaries of each participant are available on the National Center website.