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Efforts to improve patient care and population health are traditional tenets of all the health professions, as is a focus on professionalism. But in a time of rapidly changing environments and evolving technologies, health professionals and those who train them are being challenged to work outside their comfort zones, often in teams. Today a “new professionalism” is needed that applies throughout health care and wellness and that emphasizes cross-disciplinary responsibilities and accountability to achieve improved outcomes.
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Workshop
·2014
Establishing Transdisciplinary Professionalism for Improving Health Outcomes is a summary of a workshop convened by the Institute of Medicine Global Forum on Innovation in Health Professional Education to explore the possibility of whether different professions can come together and whether a dialog...
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Description
Efforts to improve patient care and population health are traditional tenets of all the health professions, as is a focus on professionalism. But in a time of rapidly changing environments and evolving technologies, health professionals and those who train them are being challenged to work outside their comfort zones, often in teams. Today a “new professionalism” is needed that applies throughout health care and wellness and that emphasizes cross-disciplinary responsibilities and accountability to achieve improved outcomes.
This need has prompted consideration of developing a “transdisciplinary professionalism”—defined as an approach to creating and carrying out a shared social contract that ensures multiple health disciplines, working in concert, are worthy of the trust of patients and the public. Such a professionalism would facilitate improved inter-professional teamwork (multiple professional disciplines working together, each using its own expertise, to address common problems) and might even synthesize and extend discipline-specific expertise to create new ways of thinking and acting.
Implementing a transdisciplinary professionalism, with shared values and accountabilities, could serve to support patient and public trust throughout health care, but it would not be easy. To be worthy of such shared trust, diverse practitioners would need to develop radical new means of thinking and acting collaboratively. They would also need to work with educators to develop innovative and effective ways to transfer collaborative skills, values and behaviors to students; and they must provide leadership that fosters ongoing research and innovation for transformative change.
It is within this context that an ad hoc committee will plan and conduct a 2 day public workshop on “Establishing Transdisciplinary Professionalism for Health Care.” The committee will develop the workshop agenda, select and invite speakers and discussants, and moderate the discussions. The issues to be addressed at the workshop include the following:
- How can the “shared understanding” be integrated into education and practice to promote a transdisciplinary model of professionalism?
o What are the ethical implications of a transdisciplinary professionalism?
o How can health and wellness be integrated into transdisciplinary education and practice?
o How is “leadership” taught and practiced within a model of transdisciplinary professionalism?
- What are the barriers to transdisciplinary professionalism?
- What measures are relevant to transdisciplinary professionalism?
- What is the impact of an evolving professional context on patients, students and others working within the health care system?
Contributors
Committee
Cynthia D. Belar
Co-Chair
Matthew K. Wynia
Co-Chair
Elizabeth A. Goldblatt
Member
Nancy P. Hanrahan
Member
Sandeep Kishore
Member
Sally Okun
Member
Richard E. Talbott
Member
Richard W. Valachovic
Member
Sponsors
Academic Collaborative for Integrative Health
Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics
Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education
Aetna Foundation
American Academy of Nursing
American Association of Colleges of Nursing
American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine
American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy
American Board of Family Medicine
American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology
American College of Nurse-Midwives
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
American Council of Academic Physical Therapy
American Dental Education Association
American Medical Association
American Nurses Credentialing Center
American Occupational Therapy Association
American Osteopathic Association
American Physical Therapy Association
American Psychological Association
American Society for Nutrition
American Speech-Language Hearing Association
Association of American Medical Colleges
Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges
Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry
Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH)
Association of Schools of the Allied Health Professions
Athletic Training Strategic Alliance
Council on Social Work Education
Ghent University
Health Resources and Services Administration
Jonas Nursing and Veterans Healthcare
Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation
Michigan Center for Interprofessional Education
National Academies of Practice
National Association of Social Workers
National Board for Certified Counselors and Affiliates, Inc.
National Board of Medical Examiners
National Council of State Boards of Nursing
National League for Nursing
National Organization for Associate Degree Nursing
Physician Assistant Education Association
Society for Simulation in Healthcare
THEnet – Training for Health Equity Network
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences
University of Toronto
Veterans Health Administration
Weill Cornell Medicine – Qatar
Staff
Patricia Cuff
Lead
Major units and sub-units
Health and Medicine Division
Lead
Institute of Medicine
Lead
Board on Global Health
Lead