Macy Foundation Grant to Enhance Physician and Nursing Education Through Experience-Based Learning
Culture-changing project will lead to improved health care for patients
Posted 6/24/10
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Nursing and medical students team up at an interprofessional communication and patient simulation event in March 2010 |
Case Western Reserve University's School of Medicine and Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing have received a $640,000 grant from the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation to fund the new Interprofessional Learning Exchange and Development (I-LEAD) Program. The project will involve several experience-based components to improve communication and collaboration among nurses and physicians in the interest of public health and to reflect changes in the healthcare system.
"This grant works toward changing the culture of health care. In addition to providing services, student doctors and nurses will experience how people think and function in their different roles as health professionals and learn to work as a team," said Daniel Ornt, MD, FACP, vice dean for education and academic affairs at the School of Medicine.
Ornt and Patricia Underwood, PhD, RN, FAAN, executive associate dean for academic affairs at the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, will lead the project over the next four years. The Weatherhead School of Management also will participate by analyzing team and organization dynamics.
Underwood said educating nurses and physicians to work as teams from the beginning and throughout their education will eventually change how healthcare is delivered and enhance the quality of care.
This grant builds on funding the university received in 2009 from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement/Macy Foundation initiative to strengthen medical and nursing education. The nursing and medical students have already started to build communication skills to improve safety and quality of care through a simulated patient exercise and seminars.
Major leaders in healthcare, such as the World Health Organization, National League for Nursing and the Carnegie Foundation, have issued calls to strengthen interprofessional collaborations as one component in transforming the health system.
"It is insufficient to teach about interprofessional practice," said Underwood. "It has to be experienced in the context of what they will eventually practice."
The grant enhances the curricula at the two schools by finding opportunities to incorporate exchanges between medical and nursing students. The ultimate goal of the Foundation and Case Western Reserve is to develop interprofessional curriculum models that can be shared with other schools across the country.
The university's affiliate hospitals have already begun to work towards this cultural change, Ornt said.
"Everyone, patients and their families, will benefit from this cultural change," Underwood said.
Source: Case Western Reserve University
