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In an interprofessional education program, nursing and speech-language pathology students pool their expertise for better training and patient care.

Hagge, D., Noureddine, N., Brady, D., & Ofstad, W. (2015). Dealing with Dysphagia--Together. The ASHA Leader, 20(6), 34–36. doi. 10.1044.Leader.AE.20062015.34.

A set of several documents describing the work by Bruce E. Spivey and Gary M. Arsham in the 1970s to create a School of Health Professions in collaboration with the University of the Pacific at what is now the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco.

The School of Health Professions was designed to address commonly recognized deficiencies in the education of health professionals and in the contemporary delivery of health care. The School focuses on primary health care, interprofessional education and care delivery, and self-paced curricula.

Over the past half century, there have been ebbs and flows of interest in linking what is now called interprofessional education (IPE) with interprofessional collaboration and team-based care. Whereas considerable research has focused on student learning, only recently have researchers begun to look beyond the classroom and beyond learning outcomes for the impact of IPE on such issues as patient safety, patient and provider satisfaction, quality of care, health promotion, population health, and the cost of care.

In April 2015, the Macy Foundation hosted a conference which issued a series of recommendations for health professions schools and healthcare organizations around the use of existing and emerging technologies to enhance health professions education and build a “continuously learning health system.”

Oral health is essential for healthy development and healthy aging, yet nationwide there is an unacceptably high burden of oral disease.This new white paper makes the case for incorporating preventive oral healthcare as a component of routine medical care and structuring referrals to dentistry.

Our experiences studying exemplar primary care practices, and our work assisting other practices to become more patient centered, led to a formulation of the essential elements of primary care, which we call the 10 building blocks of high-performing primary care.

PURPOSE:

Burnout is a threat to the primary care workforce. We investigated the relationship between team structure, team culture, and emotional exhaustion of clinicians and staff in primary care practices.

METHODS:

BACKGROUND:

There is emerging consensus that enhanced inter-professional teamwork is necessary for the effective and efficient delivery of primary care, but there is less practical information specific to primary care available to guide practices on how to better work as teams.

OBJECTIVE:

The purpose of this study was to describe how primary care practices have overcome challenges to providing team-based primary care and the implications for care delivery and policy.

APPROACH:

We highlight primary care innovations gathered from high-functioning primary care practices, innovations we believe can facilitate joy in practice and mitigate physician burnout. To do so, we made site visits to 23 high-performing primary care practices and focused on how these practices distribute functions among the team, use technology to their advantage, improve outcomes with data, and make the job of primary care feasible and enjoyable as a life's vocation.

The Triple Aim-enhancing patient experience, improving population health, and reducing costs-is widely accepted as a compass to optimize health system performance. Yet physicians and other members of the health care workforce report widespread burnout and dissatisfaction. Burnout is associated with lower patient satisfaction, reduced health outcomes, and it may increase costs. Burnout thus imperils the Triple Aim.