Graduate Interprofessional Education experience to facilitate collaboration, safety, and quality in an integrated healthcare system

Background

Clinicians face increasing complexities of patient care, increased specialization, and the need for collaboration. Experience teaches us that the complex needs of patients and quality demand knowledge, skills, and expertise that no single health care discipline alone can provide. Consultative relationships and interprofessional teams are required to bring together providers from a variety of disciplines to assess, treat, monitor and improve outcomes of patient populations and organizations. The World Health Organization report titled, Framework for Action on Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice (2010) states the development of collaborative practice ready health workforce is required for optimal health service delivery. This presentation will describe a competency-based interprofessional leadership development curriculum for graduate nurses, physicians, and pharmacists, designed to prepare them to effectively lead and participate on collaborative health care delivery and quality improvement teams.

Objectives

1. Describe an interprofessional leadership development curriculum as a model for interprofessional education of graduate health care professionals.
2. Discuss evaluation of the pilot.

Methods

An Interprofessional leadership development curriculum based on the Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice (IPEC Expert Panel, 2011) was designed and piloted with nurse practitioner, medical resident, and pharmacy resident learners. Participants completed selected readings and inventories, attended a series of seminars and workshops, worked in teams to identify, develop, implement and evaluate a rapid cycle quality improvement project in the academic health center, and presented their results to enterprise healthcare leadership and faculty over a six-month period. 

Evaluation

Results presented will include a summary of qualitative assessment of process and product as demonstrated by team quality and safety projects, themes generated from data gathered during semi-structured interviews with participants and mentors, and comparison of participants’ self-reported pre/post change in knowledge, learning, and practice using a modification of the Nurse-Physician Collaboration Scale (Ushiro, 2009). 

Implications

In order to address the gap between education and practice that limits graduates’ readiness to work together effectively in interprofessional healthcare teams, we must provide mentored opportunities for graduate level learners in all healthcare professions to develop transformational leadership skills for healthcare and quality/safety improvement.