The first class of Macy Faculty Scholars held their inaugural annual meeting last week in New York. The intimate group of 5 scholars and their mentors along with the program’s National Advisory Committee and Macy Staff convened to discuss their work to reform health professions education, sharing updates and lessons learned. Here are some highlights from the meeting:
Roberta Waite, EdD, APRN, CNS-BC
Several factors served as motivation for Dr. Roberta Waite to develop The Macy Undergraduate Leadership Fellows Program at Drexel University, including the growing importance of nursing leadership in today’s changing health care system. The program, which consists of six courses, is working to foster leadership competencies and culturally sensitive practices among its participants—a diverse cohort of Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) candidates. Seventeen students have completed the first course, Authentic Leadership, and are currently undertaking their second course Leadership in Action and Community Health.
Self-evaluations show students feel they have a better understanding of leadership values and characteristics, and increased appreciation for diversity and its role in leadership. To track impact beyond the duration of the program, Waite hopes to examine leadership growth and outcomes among these students at one, three and five years post-graduation.
Jennifer S. Myers, MD
Dr. Jennifer S. Myers of the University Of Pennsylvania believes that in order to improve health care quality and safety we need to bridge the divide between education and practice. While teaching hospitals have clear quality and safety goals and activities in place, these are often not reflected in their associated graduate medical education (GME) programs.
To better align the health system and GME programs in achieving related quality and safety goals, Dr. Myers has developed a house staff quality and safety leadership council at the University of Pennsylvania health system. The council has been recognized in its first year as a forum to execute quality improvement initiatives across GME programs, with residents leading the change.
Myers, has also focused on activities designed to build a pipeline of Health Care Improvers—physician leaders in quality and safety who will direct future improvements in systems, education, and research.
This has including introducing patient safety concepts in undergraduate courses at the Perelman School of Medicine and expanding Penn Medicine’s residency track in “Healthcare Leadership in Quality” by recruiting 13 residents from 5 different specialties. Myers will focus next on developing discipline-specific safety curricula in three core clerkships (internal medicine, pediatrics, and ob-gyn) and creating a joint training for residents, faculty and nurse mentors on quality improvement and patient safety.
Alan Dow, MD, MSHA
Dr. Alan Dow is developing an interprofessional curriculum for Virginia Commonwealth University’s nursing and medical students.
Dow began by examining the theoretical basis underlying the function of healthcare teams. This included exploring team and leadership work lead by the field of organizational science; conducting a study comparing team processes between an acute medicine inpatient unit and an acute rehabilitation unit; and assessing the impacts of interprofessional experiences currently being implemented on the Virginia Commonwealth University campus, using a measurement tool based on the Core Competencies for Interprofessional Education.
Key elements of the interprofessional curriculum include a yearlong interprofessional case series where students will follow a patient through several episodes of care over four sessions. Over 700 learners from allied health, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and social work will participate this upcoming academic year. In addition, trainees with basic clinical skills will participate in an interprofessional senior mentor program. Students will follow a community-based elder for a year in order to learn about gerontology and how each profession engages in the care of ambulatory patients. This program will be piloted with 20 three-person teams of one student each from nursing, pharmacy, and medicine in fall 2012.
Dena Hassouneh, PhD, ANP, PMHNP
Dr. Dena Hassouneh of the Oregon Health & Science University is conducting a study to explore the influence of racism on nursing and medical faculty of color and identify strategies to support the recruitment, retention, and success of medical and nursing faculty of color.
Hassouneh’s work is guided by a theory of change in which an institution’s culture moves through five stages, going from complete exclusion, where there are no faculty of color, to indifferent, and finally to real inclusion where diversity is a genuine priority, aggressive recruitment and retention strategies are in place for faculty of color, and faculty of color hold senior positions. According to Hassouneh, the majority of schools of nursing and medicine are in the indifferent stage—these schools have some diversity among their students but no active, mindful recruitment of faculty of color.
Since September, Hassouneh has been conducting research into the experiences of faculty of color in predominantly white schools of nursing and medicine. Initial results from a small study sample indicate that the broad conceptualization of diversity frequently used by schools of nursing and medicine has the potential to derail efforts to recruit and retain faculty of color. Hassouneh broadened her research to a national sample, and is currently analyzing data from in-depth interviews with 53 nursing and medicine faculty. Concurrently, Hassouneh is conducting a review of successful diversity programs in schools of nursing and medicine to identify common characteristics. She hopes to use her research to develop a pilot program aimed at encouraging diversity in medical and nursing schools.
Eve R. Colson, MD
Dr. Eve Colson of Yale School of Medicine is designing a new curriculum for nursing, physician associate and medical students that includes a longitudinal clinical experience in the outpatient setting which allows students to follow patients over time and work alongside other professions.
Colson began by conducting a literature review to identify the goals and challenges for establishing such a curriculum. Yet she encountered limited literature about what facilitates interprofessional education. In collaboration with Macy Faculty Scholar, Dr. Jennifer Myers, Colson conducted interviews with more than 25 faculty members who are actively involved in teaching and education administration at the Schools of Nursing and Medicine at The University of Pennsylvania and Yale, as well as the Physician Associate Program at Yale. Takeaways from this research was that a willingness to leave one’s comfort zone is key to pushing forth with interprofessional education and the biggest barrier is “a conviction among each profession that their science or service is the only way to think; and an unwillingness to humble oneself enough to participate fully with people from another discipline so that you can get a sense for what their discipline is like.”
Colson has assembled a taskforce to help design the curriculum and work on the curriculum will continue over the next several months. The program will be piloted at Yale beginning September 2013 and will be fully implemented the following year.
To learn more about the Scholars, read their bios: http://www.macyfoundation.org/news/entry/2011-macy-faculty-scholars