As we have previously noted, interprofessional education and practice is somewhat of a buzz word these days.  While there might be an informal consensus of opinion that the health care of the future needs to involve meaningful integration of various health professions into patient-care teams, we have pointed out how the rhetoric in this area is far in front of the reality (see Oct 22 post).  We are aware of many fine institutions engaging in important interprofessional activity, but not enough has been done to focus on this issue at the national level.  At a recent meeting that we convened on the topic, the following observations emerged:

• The current approach to interprofessional education is a study in grass roots development, as opposed to top-down leadership;
• Interprofessional education and practice sometimes operate at the periphery of the institution, and are not engrained in the institutional fabric;
• Attaining accurate predictions and assessments of the skill sets that will be required of health professionals in the future is vital;
• Determining whether the “education tail” wags the “practice dog” or vice versa is important in developing the content and substance of these programs;
• The drivers of interprofessional education and practice need to move beyond “belief” and be more empirically driven; and,
• Health care reform may create demand for interprofessional education and practice by pushing to better  align health professional education with the evolving health care needs of the public.

Health care reform holds the potential to serve as a catalyst for disruptive innovation in health care, and, in so doing, bring interprofessional health care into the mainstream.  Indeed, the drive to create value in health care may lead to team-care as a paradigm that needs to be integrated with health professions education.

Tags: Health Reform, health workforce, interprofessional education, interprofessional practice

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2, 2009 at 2:16 pm and is filed under Health Reform, Uncategorized, health professions education, health workforce. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.