The "New" IPE
Traditionally, IPE has referred to interprofessional education. In 2012, the National Center introduced the concept of “interprofessional practice and education”, or the “new” IPE as a conceptual bridge between interprofessional education and collaborative practice, recognizing that learning in practice and education is inextricably linked, non-linear and spans the continuum from classroom to community and practice.
The shift in thinking moves the emphasis to practice and community settings to align interprofessional education with health systems redesign, focused on Triple Aim (now Quadruple Aim) outcomes.
The Nexus, Optimal Alignment of Practice and Education
The Nexus is designed to intentionally link the health professions education and healthcare systems for interprofessional workforce development of future and current health professionals to simultaneously demonstrate organizational, learning and health outcomes.
The Nexus vision moves from primarily preparing students to be collaboration-ready to a partnership of the education and health systems to impact people in real-time (Earnest & Brandt, 2013, 2014). In 2013, Earnest and Brandt called the Nexus, “The triple aim for alignment” and set as its goals:
- Reducing costs and adding value for the alignment of the education system with the health system,
- Reframing quality for the patient and learner experience by creating an integrated practice and education system to incorporate key stakeholders,
- Accepting shared responsibility for population health and learning for the end goal of people- and community-centered health outcomes in a transformed system.
References
National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education. About the National Center. https://nexusipe.org/informing/about-national-center.
Kennedy, T, Harrell, S, Dieter, C, Brandt, B.F., (2022). Accelerating interprofessional community-based education and practice: Leveraging systems thinking to address the needs of vulnerable populations. In: Hossein, K. and Joosten-Hagye, D. (Eds). Interprofessional education and collaborative practice- Micro, meso, and macro approaches across the lifespan. San Diego, California: Cognella Publisher.
Bodenheimer, T., & Sinsky, C. (2014). From triple to quadruple aim: care of the patient requires care of the provider. The Annals of Family Medicine, 12(6), 573-576.
Delaney, C. W., AbuSalah, A., Yeazel, M., Kertz, J. S., Pejsa, L., & Brandt, B. F. (2020). National center for interprofessional practice and education IPE core data set and information exchange for knowledge generation. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 1-13. DOI: 10.1080/13561820.2020.1798897.
Earnest, M., & Brandt, B. (2014). Aligning practice redesign and interprofessional education to advance triple aim outcomes. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 28(6), 497-500. DOI: 10.3109/13561820.2014.933650