The University at Buffalo Academic Health Center (AHC) recently appointed Paul T. Wietig, Ed.D., Assistant Vice President of its newly created Office of Interprofessional Education. A longtime educator, Dr. Wietig is responsible for developing infrastructure and facilitating staff development to identify and deliver best curricular instruction and activities for interprofessional education across all Schools of the AHC.

Under Dr. Wietig’s leadership, this February the University at Buffalo launched a pilot class for interprofessional education (IPE) and interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP) with students from Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, Public Health and Health Professions, Pharmacy, Nursing and Social Work, vetting IPE curricular content and activities. The pilot class is proving to be a rich platform for assessing teaching approaches and content modules in IPE.

Students are learning in a highly interactive environment, and faculty has already learned so much from students about what works best in IPE. The pilot class’ culminating event will be an interprofessional collaborative student simulation in the University’s state-of-the-art Behling Simulation Center.