Eve R. Colson, MD, MHPE of Yale University is part of Macy’s 2011 Scholar Class. We sat down with Dr. Colson to hear about her two years as a Macy Faculty Scholar.
What has being a Macy Faculty Scholar meant to you?
It has been an honor and privilege to be a Macy Faculty Scholar. It has meant an instant connection with an amazing group of interprofessional educators as colleagues and as mentors. And a unique opportunity to work alongside an organization that is doing fantastic work to improve our health care system through changes to health professions education that will ultimately mean better care for patients and communities.
How did being a Macy Faculty Scholar impact your career?
With the financial and intellectual support of the Macy Foundation, I have been able to shift my focus toward championing curricular and cultural changes in the education of health professional students at our institution and with colleagues from other health care professional schools. While historically we have educated our students in silos, we are now moving toward implementing meaningful longitudinal, clinically-based, interprofessional experiences for all our students.
Tell us about the outcome of your Macy Faculty Scholar project
The goal of my Macy project was to develop a curriculum for students that includes ongoing relationships with mentors, ongoing relationships with patients and ongoing relationships among health care professional students at Yale.
Alongside my colleagues from Yale School of Nursing, Yale School of Medicine and the Yale Physician Associate Program, we have developed a curriculum which has been approved by all schools, has undergone one small pilot and is about to enter the larger pilot phase. Beginning in September 2014, a total of 50 students will be placed in interprofessional teams. Each team will make weekly visits to their clinical sites where they will jointly care for patients, work with mentors and learn about the roles of health care team members.
We expect that the program will become required for all health professional students at Yale beginning in September 2015.