Is There an “I” in Your Team? The Value of Interprofessional Education(IPE) in Healthcare
Why interprofessional education should be the norm in healthcare
Interprofessional Collaboration: All Healthcare Professionals Are in This Together
There has been a slew of commission reports, white papers on interprofessional practice.s, and policy documents in the last few years on team-based care. When I trained as a trauma operating room (OR) nurse, my professional socialization included learning about what it means to be an effective and collaborative OR team member.
At the Western Infirmary in Glasgow, Scotland, nurses were expected to understand each person’s vital contribution to the team’s overall function and trained to appreciate the roles and responsibilities of every member of the team. Yet I don’t think other members of the team — and here I specifically mean surgeons and anesthetists — had this training, which meant that nurses pretty much had to keep the OR show on the road.
Frustratingly, it seems that little has changed.
Lack of IPE Creates Barriers to Patient Care
Healthcare team members are still often trained and educated separately. This isn’t ideal. For one, this separation reinforces professional hierarchies, competing identities, and territorial behaviors, and limits the ability of some healthcare professionals — predominantly nurses — to practice to the full extent of their license or skills.
Additionally, separate training just makes it harder for everybody to fully understand the roles and responsibilities of their fellow team members, let alone use this knowledge to actually work together across health systems — a skill that is increasingly required to support change management in health care. Interprofessional education repeatedly enables effective collaboration and improves health outcomes across the health professions.
The knowledge and skill gaps health professionals are currently facing, however, are likely to become a barrier to communication as healthcare organizations move toward becoming learning healthcare systems in order to provide better care at lower cost. IPE is one way we can help health care professionals overcome those skills gaps and be a part of the solution.
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Interprofessional Education Is a Must for Value-Based Care
Clearly, the concept of team-based care is not new and is well-established in some fields (e.g. oncology). In fact, as Diana Durham shares on an episode of the Write Medicine podcast, the importance of teamwork in medical education is becoming an established concept.
The continuing education accreditation organizations in medicine, pharmacy, and nursing emphasize continuing education and interprofessional learning as necessary ingredients to make team-based care a gold standard for healthcare delivery. Such education can focus on the characteristics of effective teams, what it takes to work effectively in teams, and how to structure reimbursement models to incentivize team-based and collaborative care.
As always, CME writing and instructional design have a vital role to play in modeling what effective interprofessional practice can look like. Structural change often begins in the classroom as CME teachers and writers show care providers new ways to improve patient outcomes and work together. For more on the need for interprofessional education to support team-based care, read a white paper I wrote a few years ago and join us here at Write Medicine.
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