Transforming Health Professional Education through Collaborative Inter-professional Learning

With the much-anticipated addition of a medical school on The University of Texas at Austin campus, we have an ideal opportunity to reexamine health-professional education, and plan for a more collaborative interprofessional education approach to address the future health-care needs of Texas, the United States and world health. The goal of an interprofessional education approach is to prepare health professional students to deliberately work together with the common goal of building a safer and better patient-centered and community/population oriented health care system. Four key core competencies address an interprofessional education approach within the contexts of patient care Values/Ethics for Inter-professional Practice; Roles/responsibilities for Collaborative Practice; Inter-professional Communication and Inter-professional Teamwork and Team-based Care. The projects proposed to address these four core interprofessional education approach competencies to strengthen UT’s health professional educational programs.