Gail Armstrong, PhD, DNP, ACNS-BC, CNE

A long standing tradition in health professions education (e.g. medicine, nursing, pharmacy, physical therapy) is to educate learners solely within one’s discipline. This reality of learning in silos has led to limited abilities by new clinicians to collaborate with other disciplines. Most significantly, emerging research in quality and safety points to gaps in collaboration, and variation in communication as common etiologies for preventable error and harm in healthcare.

In recent years there has been an explicit emphasis in health professions education on the importance and value of interprofessional education models. Studying the most effective interprofessional methodology and evaluating the effectiveness of interprofessional approaches in health professions education are areas in their infancy. The University of Colorado has always been a national leader in interprofessional education for health professions students. In the late 1990’s the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center was one of the first health sciences center to teaching ethics to interprofesssional groups of learners. In 2003 The Institute of Medicine published the report, Health Professions Education, which strongly recommended that all health professions learners be educated in patient-centered care, quality improvement, teamwork, evidence-based practice and informatics. Advancing interprofessional education was a high priority in planning the move to the Anschutz Medical Campus in 2007. Growth in the Interprofessional Education (IPE) curriculum has resulted in IPE sessions for learners from all disciplines offered on Wednesday afternoons throughout all programs.

I have been a core faculty member in develop quality and safety modules for CU’s IPE curriculum. These quality and safety modules have been developed after a thorough assessment of the current state in each of the health science disciplines.  Nationally, health professions schools are increasingly mandated to include interprofessional approaches to curricula, yet minimal educational research has been done to assess the value or best practices. A significant gap exists in the literature.

My President’s Teaching Scholars research project will examine the contribution and value of an interprofessional approach to teaching quality and safety. After consulting with colleagues in other disciplines, I will conduct a survey and focus groups to explore some of the following questions:

  • What was different for you in learning about quality and safety in your interprofessional group as compared to learning about this content within your own discipline?
  • What did you learn about quality and safety from your interprofessional classmates? 
  • How did the interprofessional setting challenge your previous learning about quality and safety? 
  • How did the interprofessional group reinforce your learning about quality and safety?
  • What were the two main take-away concepts from your IPE modules on patient safety and quality improvement that you will apply to your practice?  How will your practice be different from the application of these concepts?