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In January 2010, Western University of Health Sciences launched the first phase of its Interprofessional Education (IPE) program. Our mission is to produce humanistic healthcare professionals who practice collaborative patient-centered care. The university wide comprehensive IPE program model includes didactic, experiential and clinical care phases. The first phase of the IPE program, didactic, rolled out during the 2009-2010 academic year. While the data from the first year is still being evaluated, initial indicators reveal the launching of the first year of the program was a success.

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.

In response to the call for tools to measure collaboration in interprofessional settings, an Ambulatory Team Observed Structured Clinical Evaluation (ATOSCE) was developed to measure collaboration/teamwork behaviors and skills in a realistic simulation for graduate students in the healthcare professions. Participants rated the ATOSCE a realistic and valuable learning experience.

Health professional education programs increasingly incorporate interprofessional education (IPE) activities into curricula in response to evolving health policy and accreditation requirements in an effort to highlight the benefits of, and prepare students for, interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP). As such, there is a need for statistically valid instruments designed to assess baseline student perceptions regarding IPE and IPCP.

The author argues that while traditional intelligence tests have been validated almost entirely against school performance, the evidence that they measure abilities which are essential to performing well in various life outcomes is weak. Most of the validity studies are correlational in nature and fail to control for the fact that social class might be a 3rd variable accounting for positive correlations between test scores and occupational success, and between level of schooling achieved and occupational success.

Questionnaires were used to assess (a) the factors intensive care unit resident physicians (N = 33) and nurses (N = 57) perceived as influential in making decisions about level of aggressiveness of patient care (LAC), (b) who residents and nurses believed should be involved versus who was involved in decision making, and (c) the amount of collaboration they perceived in their practices. Questionnaires then were used to assess decision making about 314 patients.

The authors respond to the model of nurse-physician interaction described in: Corser, W.D. (1998). A Conceptual Model of Collaborative Nurse-Physician Interactions: The Management of Traditional Influences and Personal Tendencies. Research and Theory for Nursing Practice, 12(4), 325-341.

This journal article presents an interprofessional faculty tool kit for preparing professional nurses with basic knowledge, skills, and attitudes in oral health promotion and disease prevention.

The real strength of the behavioral sciences in medical education comes not from defining a defensible turf of facts about the science of behavior, but from offering a unique complementary perspective, alongside the perspectives of the other basic science departments.  The behavioral sciences help students understand the very role of perspectives and how they will need to select from the available metaphors to understand both changing medical practice and the diseases of tomorrow.

A bibliography of all publications authored or co-authored by Dewitt C. Baldwin, Jr. in the field of interprofessional education and practice.

Please note: The full text of this article is only available to those with subscription access to the Informa Healthcare database. Contact your institutional library or the publisher for details.