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The past decade witnessed momentum toward redesigning the U.S. health care system with the intent to improve quality of care. To achieve and sustain this change, health professions education must likewise reform to prepare future practitioners to optimize their ability to participate in the new paradigm of health care delivery.

OBJECTIVE:

To explore the status and processes of interprofessional work environments and the implications for interprofessional education in a sample of family medicine teaching clinics.

DESIGN:

Focus group interviews using a purposive sampling procedure.

SETTING:

Four academic family medicine clinics in Alberta.

PARTICIPANTS:

Interprofessional education is a critical precursor to effective teamwork and the collaboration of health care professionals in clinical settings. Numerous barriers have been identified that preclude scalable and sustainable interprofessional education (IPE) efforts. This article describes NYU3T: Teaching, Technology, Teamwork, a model that uses novel technologies such as Web-based learning, virtual patients, and high-fidelity simulation to overcome some of the common barriers and drive implementation of evidence-based teamwork curricula.

Interprofessional education (IPE) using simulation strategies is a rewarding way to promote teamwork and interprofessional collaboration. The benefits of collaboration far outweigh the challenges that arise from differences in educational culture and scheduling logistics.

PubMed URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23061202

OBJECTIVE:

To assess the extent to which US colleges and schools of pharmacy are incorporating interprofessional education into their introductory pharmacy practice experiences (IPPEs), and to identify barriers to implementation; characterize the format, structure, and assessment; and identify factors associated with incorporating interprofessional education in IPPEs.

METHODS:

An electronic survey of 116 US colleges and schools of pharmacy was conducted from March 2011 through May 2011.

RESULTS:

The University of Saskatchewan's Longitudinal Elderly Person Shadowing (LEPS) is an interprofessional senior mentors program (SMP) where teams of undergraduate students in their first year of medicine, pharmacy, and physiotherapy; 2nd year of nutrition; 3rd year nursing; and 4th year social work partner with community-dwelling older adults. Existing literature on SMPs provides little information on the sustainability of attitudinal changes toward older adults or changes in interprofessional attitudes.

PURPOSE:

Physician assistant (PA) students need exposure to a wide range of clinical settings including long-term care (LTC); however, finding consistent educational LTC opportunities is difficult. This article describes a unique, replicable, educational opportunity for PA students to get exposure to the LTC setting by working with a consultant pharmacist.

METHODS:

Pairs of students spent 4 hours with the pharmacist, reviewing and copresenting two to three patient charts. Students completed a questionnaire that asked them to describe what they had learned.

Symptom distress with end-of-life delirium (EOLD) is complex and multidimensional, and interprofessional (IP) teams require knowledge and skill to effectively care for these patients and their families. The purpose of this pilot study was to test an educational intervention about EOLD for IP teams at a long-term care facility and a hospice.

The current status of interprofessional education (IPE) in Australian and New Zealand universities is largely unexamined despite its generally acknowledged benefit. Data are also limited about the use of IPE in teaching medication safety to nursing, pharmacy and medical students. For this reason a web-based cross-sectional survey was used to gather information from Australian and New Zealand universities offering nursing, pharmacy or medical programs. Responses were received from 31 of the 43 (72%) target universities.

OBJECTIVE:

The aim of the study was to evaluate the interprofessional SDM training program "Fit for SDM" in medical rehabilitation, which was implemented in two steps: (1) university staff trained providers in executive positions as trainers and (2) the providers trained their staff.

METHODS: