The Nexus Today:
Shifting Our Perspectives After Ten Years of Learning
Barbara Fifield Brandt
After spending my professional career navigating community/practice-academic relationships to advance learning and health outcomes, I recently moved to Professor Emerita and Senior Advisor to the National Center after three years of phased retirement. My days are filled with projects that I had to put off for decades, and I’ve learned new skills. I’ve discovered and have been researching an ancestor, Almira Fifield, M.D., one of the first U.S. women physicians in 1859 who died a “nurse female” in the Civil War. I now have the capacity to take a deeper dive and ask, “What was that about?” For example, to understand the genesis of relationships between the health professions, I recently re-read turn-of-the-20th century literature such as Flexner’s work as well as much of the writing of Richard Cabot, M.D. While the latter was a strong advocate for the budding social work profession, the former may have thwarted its growth. I had never thought about pre-Civil War medicine, but I previously never had time. All of this reflection influences my opinions about the implications of this body of work today.
I recently organized my presentations from my time as the University of Minnesota Academic Health Center Associate Vice President for Education and Director of the Minnesota AHEC, from 2000-2017, and the National Center Director from 2012 to today. It gave me another opportunity to reflect on how far the field has come - and the mountains we have yet to climb. My role as senior advisor has afforded me some additional space for a reflective, real-life perspective on the world. As a result, when asking me a question, you better be prepared because my responses and opinions have become increasingly unfiltered.
From my new lens, I now readily verbalize opinions about a true crisis in both healthcare, higher education, the health workforce, and especially where interprofessional practice and education needs to head. As I faced retirement, I closed out a major academic project. In September, a special issue on the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education will be released in the Journal of Interprofessional Care (JIC). This issue was conceived by Scott Reeves, the JIC Editor before his untimely death in 2018. Scott believed that the National Center was learning lessons and developing perspectives on the IPE field because of the large-scale, U.S. public-private investments in interprofessional teams in healthcare to support our work. The issue also would not have been possible without the National Center’s many collaborators, contributors, and authors who have worked with us since 2012. It certainly would not have come to fruition without the strong encouragement and “mighty red pen” of my mentor, Madeline Schmitt, who pushed and prodded our thinking and writing all the way to the finish line.
September marks the beginning of new conversations and engagements. I think you will see the National Center’s new perspectives. First, we will lead with the release of the special issue, a webinar, and then, the Nexus Summit. During the September 12 webinar, I will share my thoughts when I wrote my editorial, Creating a Utopian Future by Asking Uncomfortable Questions, and how Jill Thistlewaite and Andreas Xyirichis pushed my thinking.[1] In the opening plenary of the Nexus Summit, we will pick up where we left off at last year’s Summit by connecting IPE Version 5.0 with Knowledge-based Leadership to push our thinking even further. Two of our papers are already on line, and I encourage you to check them out for our September conversations.
Brandt, B., Kertz, J., & Arenson, C. (2023). National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education 2023: Reflecting Back, Looking Forward. Journal of Interprofessional Care, DOI: 10.1080/13561820.2023.2197939
Brandt, B., Dieter, C., & Arenson, C. (2023). From the Nexus vision to the NexusIPE™ Learning Model. Journal of Interprofessional Care, DOI: 10.1080/13561820.2023.2202223
Chris Arenson and I have shared our perspectives of IPE from our own professional perspectives and experiences over the last three years. We look forward to sharing what we are thinking throughout the fall. I hope you will join us as we continue to learn together.
[1] Thistlethwaite, J., & Xyirichis, A. (2022). Forecasting interprofessional education and collaborative practice: towards a dystopian or utopian future? Journal of Interprofessional Care, (36)2, 165-167. 10.1080/13561820.2022.2056696
To learn more about Barbara's reflections, join us for a webinar, Moving Toward the Nexus: Getting Comfortable with Uncomfortable Questions, on September 12, 11 am -12 pm Central Time.