New Wave of Interprofessionalism Coming to Healthcare

Posted by in Healthcare


The field of healthcare is changing, keeping up with the demands of technology and the various disciplines it takes to ensure proper patient care. Today, as never before, no healthcare professional will ever work in a “vacuum.”  Whether you’re a nurse,  nurse’s aide, physician’s assistant or healthcare counselor, you’ll be expected to work in a team environment. This is particularly important as healthcare begins to serve the ever increasing populations of older patients and those with chronic diseases. 

If you’re entering the healthcare field, you may want to acquaint yourself with the term interprofessionalism. Basically, it’s when two or more health professions work together to achieve better care for their patients.
 
According to the Institute of Medicine, the goal of interprofessionalism is to educate healthcare professionals to deliver patient-centered care as an interdisciplinary team, emphasizing evidence-based practice, quality improvement approaches, and informatics.

Close collaboration among healthcare professionals will unite medical disciplines, ensure better, more effective care, and help reduce costs and errors. 
 
Interprofessionalism marks a sea change in the traditional delivery of healthcare. Instead of a doctor seeing a patient in his or her office, the new medical care paradigm will have patients see multiple medical specialists who will collaborate and coordinate patient care. No longer will specialists independently treat individual areas of a patient. Modern medicine has become increasingly aware of that fact that many health conditions arise from a variety of causes, which affect multiple areas of the body.
 
If you’re still in school, interprofessionalism will begin to filter into your healthcare curriculum, which may have you sharing in labs and classes with students and teachers of other health professions. Once out of school, you may start working side-by-side with other healthcare professionals in a clinic or hospital setting. Eventually techniques and practices will dovetail the efforts of these diverse professionals to provide the best healthcare. 

Will you be prepared to work in the healthcare field as an interprofessional? Colleges across the country are offering training in this growing aspect of healthcare. One example is the undergraduate nursing education program at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC). Here, Colby-Sawyer's Nursing Department has been closely collaborating with Dartmouth Medical School and The Dartmouth Institute to allow their students to train as a team. The innovative programs allow student nurses and medical and public health students to become acquainted with the work of their colleagues. Students can practice healthcare in settings where they can safely learn and work together to provide the best patient care.  

For more information about how interprofessional education, see the World Health Organization’s 2010 report Framework for Action on Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice



 

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