News and Commentary Educating Nurses and Physicians: Toward New Horizons

I am pleased to share with you the report “Educating Nurses and Physicians: Toward New Horizons,” a summary of the June 2010 invitational conference hosted by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation and The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The conference brought together deans and other leaders from medical and nursing schools at seven U.S. academic health centers. These leaders shared accomplishments and ideas related to their efforts to provide graduate health professions students with education and training in team-based care.

The report provides an overview of the three-day working conference, including an introduction to interprofessional education, summaries of the plenary discussions, and descriptions of the interprofessional education initiatives underway at the seven participating pairs of nursing and medical schools. Also included is a list of references and resources for additional information as well as a list of conference participants and the conference schedule.

The Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation received overwhelming interest in the conference: 33 academic institutions responded to our “Request for Proposals” to participate in the conference. We hope that by sharing the outcomes of the conference with you, we can provide useful information and ideas that will help inform your own efforts to foster interprofessional education at your institutions.

At the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation we strongly believe that if nursing, medical, and other health professions students learn jointly in classrooms and clinical settings, as graduates they will improve patient outcomes by working more collaboratively, communicating better with each other, and fostering a health care delivery system that assures quality and patient safety. I thank you for your interest in interprofessional education and the Macy Foundation. To learn more about our work, visit: http://www.macyfoundation.org.

Now is the time to begin serious and rigorous efforts to fully integrate team-based learning as a core component of health professions education. I hope that through our combined and continued efforts we can advance robust models for interdisciplinary education within the nation’s academic health centers, and ultimately better serve and improve the health of the public.

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