We all know the importance of interprofessional education and practice. What we need to learn is how to transform an academic curriculum so that it strengthens health students’ collaborative practice skills, demonstrates how to employ those skills in a professional environment, and fosters practice settings that not only welcome, but thrive on interprofessional and collaborative care. To this end, our task at hand is to marry interprofessional education with practice for current and future practitioners.

Advancing this agenda, Schools of UB Academic Health Sciences and the School of Social Work sponsored Educating Health Professionals in Interprofessional Care (EHPIC). This three-day course, held May 14 – 16, brought together health professionals, educators and leaders to collectively advance interprofessional learning by strengthening skills to teach and practice collaboratively across all domains that touch a patient. Participants included more than 40 faculty, researchers, physicians, pharmacists, nurses, social workers, dentists, physical and occupational therapists, program directors, and others from the Buffalo Psychiatric Center, Erie County Medical Center, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Erie County Department of Health, University at Buffalo, University of Rochester, Brothers of Mercy Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, and New York State Area Health Education Center System.

Facilitated by experts of the Centre for Interprofessional Education at the University of Toronto, EHPIC provided participants with interactive and hands-on activities presenting essential tenets of interprofessional education (IPE) and interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP). Activities armed leaders with tools to implement critical components of collaborative care, and provided them with real-world learning opportunities for collaborative practice.  Leaders took part in a simulated interprofessional patient encounter, emphasizing the importance of reflection and debriefing where much of the learning takes place in simulation.

“Bringing together academia and research with professionals from such a wide array of agencies brought into focus the opportunity before us, and the benefit of bridging interprofessional care from the academic to the practice setting,” observed a University at Buffalo participant. Following the workshop, a physician educator noted “we knew IPE made sense, but we didn’t know how to teach it; now we have tools and techniques from experts that we know will work.” The workshop closed with a collective agreement that “we simply must do it.”

With this momentum and the new tools gained, the academic and practice communities in Western New York understand the importance and benefit of IPE/IPCP for patient care and see the way forward. This new community of health leaders trained in educating professionals in interprofessional care is our platform for sharing opportunities, lessons learned and best practices in IPE and IPCP. It’s another major step forward in our progress.

What are your experiences in moving concepts of interprofessional care from education to practice? Share your thoughts and insights below.

This guest blog was written by Paul Wietig, Assistant Vice President for Interprofessional Education, Academic Health Center, University at Buffalo.