“Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress; working together is success.”
-Henry Ford
By Barbara Brandt
It started at the National Center’s first Nexus Summit in 2016. Frank Ascione, who directs the University of Michigan Interprofessional Education Center, contacted the National Center, suggesting that the Big Ten IPE Academic Alliance Group wanted to meet during the Nexus Summit. They did, and in 2018, they will be back for their third year. By all indications, they started a movement of alignment between organizations, groups, and the National Center, all centered on the unique meeting of the minds that is the Nexus Summit.
Groups that have met in conjunction with the Nexus Summit tell us that it benefits their own interprofessional collaboration. They have focused time together to work on their own goals, such as promoting and strengthening IPE across Big Ten institutions, while surrounded by like-minded individuals. They find that they can condense thinking and discussion around education, policy, and best practices into a few days in order to be empowered with innovative strategies and solutions to advance their organizational goals. So this year, other organizations representing different sectors of the field have taken advantage of the opportunity to gather and focus on addressing the moving pieces in a rapidly changing landscape for interprofessional education and collaborative practice. They include:
- The National Collaborative for Improving Clinical Learning Environments have invited representatives of their over forty member organizations to continue the conversations from their October 2017 Symposium.
- The Joint Accreditation™ for Interprofessional Continuing Education will host its annual leadership meeting of jointly accredited providers and focus on assessment of teamwork and team-based care.
- The T3 Program, an interprofessional team development program, will host a T3 alumni event to engage past program participants to share stories and outcomes of their interprofessional projects.
- Always a key partner in the Nexus Summit, the American Interprofessional Health Collaborative, will host several events and a reception to welcome members to the Nexus Summit activities.
- The Association of Schools of Allied Health Professions (ASAHP) is sponsoring a summit on interprofessional teams and workforce readiness for colleagues to share recommendations or initiatives about interprofessional workforce readiness in the current health care environment. This summit is being coordinated by AIHC member and ASAHP IP Chair Anthony Breitbach.
- The National Center’s Accelerating Interprofessional Community-Based Education and Practice initiative grantees will gather at the Nexus Summit to share updates on their work, lessons learned, and best practices.
- The HRSA Nurse Education, Practice, Quality and Retention (NEPQR) grantees, who have collaborated with the National Center’s Nexus Innovations Network, will be invited to meet in conjunction with the Nexus Summit.
The Nexus Summit is a unique gathering space for individuals, teams, and organizations working on aligned goals in IPE. As the Big Ten IPE Academic Alliance Group has demonstrated for the past two years, meeting at the Nexus Summit allows groups to come together, to keep together, and to work together. Contact Angela Willson at awillson@umn.edu if your team would like to meet at the Nexus Summit with us.