Interprofessional Practice & Education (IPE)
Interprofessional Practice and Education (IPE) functions as a centralized bridge for the schools (medical, health professions, graduate) at UT Southwestern to integrate and coordinate interprofessional education and collaborative practice.
Efforts in interprofessional education have grown at UT Southwestern Medical Center over the past 10 years. This growth requires centralized and coordinated interprofessional education activities within UT Southwestern, and in collaboration with other academic institutions.
IPE functions as a centralized structure to aid in planning and coordination of longitudinal interprofessional curricular activities. IPE coordinates activities such as Convergence, which had its beginnings as a Quality Enhancement Plan and has been sustained as a program to provide foundations in interprofessional education for students. IPE enhances specific missions within each professional academic program (medicine, physician assistant, physical therapy, clinical nutrition, etc.).
IPE also helps brings together key stakeholders across the campus (clinical, hospital, health system) in interprofessional practice and education to implement education, practice and innovation in centralized manner in alignment with the institutional mission and goals.
About Interprofessional Practice & Education
Interprofessional Education is “when students from two or more professions learn about, from, and with each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health.”
Interprofessional Practice occurs “when multiple health workers from different professional backgrounds work together with patients, families, care givers, and communities to deliver the highest quality of care.” – The World Health Organization (WHO 2010 Framework for Action on Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice)
In its centralized role, Interprofessional Practice and Education (IPE) is in a unique position to integrate and coordinate interprofessional education and collaborative practice at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
The vision of IPE is that UT Southwestern will be a leading innovator for interprofessional collaborative practice and has a mission to improve health care by advancing interprofessional collaborative practice through innovation and education.
Centralized Interprofessional Practice and Education supports UT Southwestern to achieve its mission to prepare health professionals of the highest quality to meet the needs of the health care system in Texas through interdisciplinary education and promotion of comprehensive health care.
Learning Communities
Convergence collaborates with established learning communities to bring students together for interactive, interprofessional education. Goals and curricula are developed together by faculty and student representatives from the participating schools: UT Southwestern Medical School, UT Southwestern School of Health Professions, Texas Woman’s University College of Nursing, UT Arlington College of Nursing and Health Innovation, and Texas Tech University School of Pharmacy.
Each school supports a unique learning community design. These different designs serve as structures for advancing interprofessional education among the three schools. The learning communities of UT Southwestern include:
- Academic Colleges
UT Southwestern Medical School students are assigned to one of six Colleges on their first day, and they remain in that College all four years. A student’s College serves as a learning community that brings together gifted clinical teaching faculty with small groups of students.
In this informal environment, students and faculty share the experience of being a physician. Professionalism, communication, and clinical skills are taught in a bedside setting. The group engages in deep discussions of many topics, including:
- Clinical medicine
- Clinical reasoning
- Ethics
- Professionalism
- Human behavior
Academic Colleges serve as building blocks for developing and sustaining additional learning communities throughout UT Southwestern.
- Interprofessional Development, Education, and Active Learning (IDEAL) Teams
The UT Southwestern School of Health Professions sponsors an interdisciplinary course designed to enhance interprofessional development, education, and active learning (IDEAL) for health professions students. The IDEAL curriculum emphasizes communications skills with patients and other members of the health care team.
The IDEAL program was designed to improve interdisciplinary interaction across programs within the School of Health Professions and across UT Southwestern Medical Center.
First-year students from each of seven educational programs within the School of Health Professions are assigned to small interdisciplinary teams led by faculty facilitators. Discussion topics include behavioral styles, interdisciplinary teamwork, behavioral modification, generational and cultural differences, and health care ethics.
The IDEAL schedule is designed for groups to meet twice monthly over a nine-month period (September to May) and interact with Academic Colleges and Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) Groups, culminating with participation in Convergence Day activities.
SHP Convergence Lecture Series
The monthly School of Health Professions Convergence Lecture Series serves as another learning community event for all IDEAL groups. These events provide a venue for the delivery of theme-based science of medicine lectures. The IDEAL program takes advantage of the learning-community format to foster a deeper understanding of science of medicine themes and further promote interaction with content experts from the two other schools.