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Interprofessional Education

About

The Office of Interprofessional and Continuing Education aims to educate students on how to provide patient-centered care through a multi-discipline approach to build trusting patient-provider relationships, enhance community engagement, and strengthen teamwork skills. The Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) identified four primary domains of interprofessional practice: values and ethics, roles and responsibilities, communication, and teamwork. Our office instills these IPEC principles into curricula to enhance student training, developing a learning continuum that affords students the knowledge and skillset to provide interprofessional health care in daily practice.

Values and Ethics

  • Aims to put patients at the center of health care delivery by encouraging patients to have a voice in their health care plan through establishing an environment that is respectful, trusting, and valued. By building trust, patient-provider relationships are heightened, care plan actions are strengthened, and respect toward cultural diversity is promoted.

Roles and Responsibilities

  • Targets to educate the practice of instituting individual responsibilities, across a team setting, to obtain the highest degree of knowledge and skillset from every member of the team. Authorizing team roles gives all members a sense of purpose, and accelerates team goals and outcomes by complementing individual expertise and utilizing knowledge diversity to the team’s advantage.

Communication

  • Strives to implement interprofessional communication tools and strategies into curricula to train individuals how to communicate across teams, patients, and their community. By exercising critical communication strategies, language clarity is elevated, common jargon is practiced, and the chance for communication errors is minimized. These methods keep everyone informed, understood, and updated; leading to improved care decisions and heightened feedback.

Teamwork

  • Seeks to promote collaborative practice by improving teamwork development through integrated decision making and applied leadership. Team members will share accountability across health professions and lead within individual strengths. Through team unification in outreach and engagement, communities and health care partners will receive heightened awareness to promote programming and health care delivery.

Resources

The Office of Interprofessional and Continuing Education is here to assist educators and students in the development of interprofessional practice. Through engaging activities, hands-on interaction, seminars, virtual simulations, online modules, presentations, informational guides, and toolkits individuals and teams have the opportunity to practice interprofessional communication, improve teamwork, respect team identity, and value leadership. Contact us for details.

Medical IPE Team Descriptions

From the Director

WiedermanKala Dixon, Ph.D.
Director

Welcome to the Office of Interprofessional and Continuing Education. We are excited that you are interested in what we have to offer. Our mission is to educate and provide strategic tools to foster patient-centered care and succeed in interprofessional health care delivery. This occurs by exercising communication strategies to improve input flow to create output success. Identifying team roles and utilizing strengths and expertise to the team’s advantage builds a foundational environment centered on trust and respect. When team members are valued for what they bring to the table, relationships are invigorated and members seek counsel and advice from one another; leading to optimized health care for the patient. We like to challenge the old saying “There’s no I in team” by pointing out that there is an “I” in interprofessional, and team success comes alive when teams engage interprofessionally.

We aim to serve in education and research and desire to elevate health care curricula to great lengths. We strive for students and providers alike to receive the highest quality training possible, because when we can effectively serve our team members, our members can effectively serve our community and surrounding regions. Our office is grounded on collaboration and outreach, so if you are as excited as we are and want to learn more about what we have to offer please you can contact me directly via email.


Thank you and have a blessed day, 

Kala Dixon, Ph.D.

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