Working Across the Boundaries of Health Professions Disciplines in Education, Research, and Service: The University of Washington Experience

Abstract

The Institute of Medicine's vision for health professions education specifies working together across professions and schools to provide patient-centered care. Improvement in collaborative preparation of health professionals is seen as central to achieving substantial improvement in the quality of health care. In this article, the authors address one central question: How can medical schools work with other health-sciences schools to promote their educational, research, and service missions? The authors summarize the history of the University of Washington (UW) Health Sciences Center in promoting interprofessional collaboration in education, service and research; analyze the key strategic, structural, cultural and technical elements that have promoted success or served as barriers in the development of the UW Center for Health Sciences Interprofessional Education and Research; and suggest strategies that may be transferable to other institutions seeking to implement an interprofessional health sciences program. These include both top-down and bottom-up authority and function in key working groups, institutional policies such as interprofessional course numbers and shared indirect costs, and development of a culture of interprofessionalism among faculty and students across program boundaries.

Interprofessional Education for Whom? — Challenges and Lessons Learned from Its Implementation in Developed Countries and Their Application to Developing Countries: A Systematic Review

“…Poor planning [41], lack of coordination and organization [13], [40], [45], [55], and lack of interest or support by administrators [27], [32], [47], [54], [56], [60], [62] were some of the leadership challenges encountered while initiating and implementing IPE. To address leadership challenges, IPE teams should identify committed champions to spearhead their program [41], [45].…”

A Novel Approach to Interprofessional Education: Interprofessional Day, the Four-Year Experience at the Medical University of South Carolina

“…Although more substantive efforts in IPE have occurred in the United Kingdom and Canada for many years [6][7][8], the literature provides evidence of a variety of IPE courses and student activities within United States (U.S.) health professions schools [9][10][11][12][13], suggesting that IPE is evolving with increasing frequency and scope in the U.S. The literature provides a few examples of semester-or year-long IPE learning experiences for students at U.S. academic health centres [9,14].…”

“…However, the implementation of IPE, particularly experiences requiring multiple hours of student interaction over several weeks or months, faces numerous institutional challenges. These include institutional leadership support, timetable and scheduling differences across programs, access to classrooms of appropriate size and number, sufficient numbers of trained faculty to facilitate educational sessions, and assimilation into curricular structures [6,7,12,15]. Such challenges can be daunting for an institution discussing how to establish interprofessional education experiences with multiple institutional curricula.…”

Promoting Interprofessional Collaboration Through the Co-Curricular Environment

“…A variety of IPE courses and educational activities within United States schools are reported in the literature (Davidson & Waddell, 2005;Harward, Tresolini, & Davis, 2006;Mitchell et al, 2006;Rose et al, 2009;Yarborough, Jones, Cyr, Phillips, & Stelzner, 2000). These, and the report by Blue, Zoller, Stratton, Elam, & Gilbert (2010) about the presence of IPE in U.S. medical schools, provide evidence that such work appears to be increasing in frequency and scope.…”