The future of health care education at Creighton is collaborative, as outlined in Monday’s Interprofessional Education and Creighton Collaborative Care strategic planning forum. Collaborative care leads to better community health outcomes and improves the health and wellbeing of individual patients, the goal stewards say.
The forum was led by goal stewards Joy Doll, OTD, OTR/L, associate professor of occupational therapy and executive director of the Center for Interprofessional Practice, Education and Research (CIPER), and Michael White, MD, associate professor in the School of Medicine and chief academic officer for CHI Health.
“We want to be a national leader that lives and breathes our mission,” White says.
According to the World Health Organization, interprofessional education and collaborative practice has been shown to improve health outcomes in communities. These successful results have driven accrediting bodies of all health science disciplines to require interprofessional education in curriculum.
Some examples of interprofessional education have already been in place at Creighton, such as health professionals working together at Project Homeless Connect Omaha. However, Doll notes that the collaboration is not always identified.
“It’s about making the implicit more explicit,” Doll says. “All the time we find people are doing collaborative work, they’re just not naming and framing it that way.”
Using CIPER as the vehicle for Creighton collaborative care, health professional students are currently working in CHI Health Creighton University Medical Center-University Campus for their interprofessional learning environment. The stewards noted that an increased number of students are participating in events offered through CIPER’s Interprofessional Education Passport program.
The committee is looking for ways to educate beyond the University Campus site as well. Faculty and clinicians are also being educated through online faculty development, distinguished lectures and a two-day boot camp, to name a few initiatives.
“Our vision is that we are here to cultivate leaders and transform health care through collaboration,” Doll says. “We firmly believe that that’s possible. And that collaborative care is for all and with all.”
Collaborative care primarily addresses the quadruple aim : improving patient health, lowering the cost of care, improving the care experience and reducing clinician burnout.
Doll says collaborative care efforts at CHI Health, thus far, have shown a 37.5 percent decrease in emergency room visits, a 42.2 percent dip in hospitalizations and increased employee engagement. It has also saved patients $4 million — a challenge when addressing health care systems.
Doll also noted that the committee is working with insurers and policymakers to advocate for collaborative care systems, explaining the benefits of this model.
Another challenge is silos within academic health systems. Interprofessional education relies heavily on integration. Currently, classrooms in Creighton’s health sciences spaces are named by profession, something the team is moving away from.
“In Phoenix, no rooms will be named by profession, which is a huge cultural shift.” Doll says. “They will be named after the learning environment that they are in.”
The ultimate future of collaborative care is to create better health care providers, and to change how health care is delivered.
“Our mission at Creighton University is to prepare these students to go out and go forward as they begin their careers and serve patients and serve our communities, leading to better outcomes,” White says.
