Interprofessional education has been flourishing over the past five years. In my guest editorial for the October issue of the Journal of Interprofessional Care, I provide an overview of current activities and outline future directions for team-based learning.
Our grantees have been at the forefront of interprofessional education—from teaching early clinical skills to groups of students from different health professions schools, to using interactive online tools and simulation to facilitate team-based learning, and training faculty to deliver interprofessional education. We convened these grantees at our April 2012 Conference on Interprofessional Education, where we identified several next steps to continue pushing health professions education forward:
• Identifying what types of IPE work, and bring them to scale rapidly.
• Continuing to make the case that interprofessional care is all about improving patient care.
• Merging educational reforms and practice reform.
We are working with our grantees to tackle these next steps and provide health professionals students with rigorous, structured interprofessional educational experiences. Now is the time to change the educational paradigm so that teamwork and team-based competencies become core educational goals.
Read more blog posts by George Thibault on the current state of interprofessional education, and learn more about Macy’s interprofessional education initiatives by signing up to receive email updates.