National Center has announced that The University of Kansas will be the next site for its Nexus Innovations Incubator that tests new models and methods of integrating practice and education. The incubator, which now has sites in ten states, focuses on applied testing of interprofessional strategies with the potential to:

• Improve the quality of experience for people, families, communities, and learners

• Share responsibility for achieving health outcomes and improving education

• Reduce cost and addi value in health care delivery and education

According to Barbara Brandt, National Center director, “We are very excited about Kansas joining our growing incubator network. The University of Kansas already has considerable, successful experience with interprofessional education.  They have a teaching clinic where student teams care for patients under the supervision of faculty preceptors who have been trained about how to deliver care with an interprofessional curriculum.”

Now the University of Kansas and National Center have an opportunity to strengthen interprofessional education in Kansas through this new collaboration. Under the leadership of principal investigators Sarah Shrader, PharmD and Jana Zaudke, MD, MA, the University of Kansas received a grant in January 2014 from the Josiah Macy Foundation: The Faculty Preceptor as Nexus: Developing Preceptors Who Blend IPE at Point of Primary Care. The partnership with National Center will allow KUMC to collect additional outcome data on faculty development and patient outcomes.

“We are thankful for the support from the Josiah Macy Foundation and National Center to foster our efforts in the important area of faculty development. The focus our work is development of the interprofessional preceptor. Preceptors are the nexus of practice and education,” says Shrader. Adds Zaudke, “As delivery of care shifts to a team-based model, we need preceptors who can be practice-based role models and teachers for all professions on the team. Our intent is to build a tool box to support preceptors for interprofessional practice transformation and education at the point of care.”

According to the Macy Foundation grant, Drs. Shrader and Zaudke will create a faculty development package to transform traditional primary care training sites into interprofessional training sites, to design interprofessional education curricula to support and enrich interprofessional practice in primary care settings, and to develop faculty precepting skills for interprofessional teams of learners.

The tools created will be piloted in five rural practices affiliated with KUMC Salina and Wichita campuses through the Office of Rural Medical Education’s Medical Education Network sites and Kansas Area Health Education Centers. This initiative will demonstrate the ability to reproduce and sustain the tool as a national model for delivering IPE at the point of primary care.

“As the recognition of the importance of interprofessional practice and education grows, the mission of the National Center to spread best practices is even more critical, “ said George Thibault, MD, president of the Macy Foundation.  “KUMC will bring valuable evidence to the Center and to the field on how best to prepare faculty to teach interprofessional practice to students in rural primary care settings.”