By Barbara Brandt
The National Center has had the good fortune to have advisors who push our thinking, guiding our work every day. They are never shy and regularly help us both discover new opportunities and reconnect with our mission. In 2012, HRSA and our other funding partners designated the National Center as an unbiased, neutral convener in our programming and research. By providing pathways into the Nexus for diverse groups across the country and world, our founders wanted us to start conversations on and find resolutions to the “burning IPE issues” that have plagued the field for over forty years. Throughout the last five years, our advisors have affirmed the need and opportunity for us to provide a gathering place for people and organizations who are committed to collectively improving experiences, outcomes and costs by aligning health care and education. They push us to take risks and constantly improve.
In 2015, our Nexus Learning System (NLS) Advisory Council, chaired by Susan Meyer, Co-director, Pitt Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education, Associate Dean for Education and Professor, University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy, conceived the vision for the first Nexus Summit. In August 2016, that vision came to fruition at Learning Together at the Nexus: National Center Summit on the Future of IPE. During that meeting, we started holding Conversation Cafes on important IPE topics that are now showing practical, real-world results.
With that in mind, this year the NLS Advisory Council pushed us again to realize that the future is now and to frame Nexus Summit 2018 as Creating Results: Interprofessional Vision to Action – because they believe those of us working in IPE have impressive results to share, and the Summit will be the ideal opportunity to accelerate our work together.
We are looking for you to share the results of your dedicated IPE work and learning together!
At the 2018 Nexus Summit, we look forward to engaging with you about exciting interprofessional vision, action and results in work. You will hear about how you have helped us with interprofessional action that are shaping the results to support our IPE work. These include:
- An update on the Health Professions Accreditors Collaborative (HPAC) comprised of 24 accreditation agencies to create a consensus document for academic institutions to provide guidance to meet accreditors’ interprofessional education standards;
- Status of the core IPE Data Set, the National Center Data Repository, and standardized approaches based upon data from more than 100 projects from 73 sites across 33 states. Learn more here.
- The formation of the National Collaborative on Improving Clinical Learning Environments (NCICLE), forty organizations convened by the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), based upon their 600 – 800 Clinical Learning Environment Review (CLER) visits in health systems each year.
As we look forward to gathering with you at the 2018 Nexus Summit for a unique learning opportunity, I reflect on this year’s theme once again: Creating Results: Interprofessional Vision to Action. This theme recognizes the momentum that has been established over the course of several years in IPE and is a call for all of us in education and practice to showcase our actionable results as we are moving beyond the planning and discussion. At the 2018 Nexus Summit, we all will be empowered to do that.