Co-Creating Quality in Health Care Through Learning and Dissemination

For most of the 20th century the predominant focus of medical education across the professional continuum was the dissemination and acquisition of medical knowledge and procedural skills. Today it is now clear that new areas of focus, such as interprofessional teamwork, care coordination, quality improvement, system science, health information technology, patient safety, assessment of clinical practice, and effective use of clinical decision supports are essential to 21st century medical practice. These areas of need helped to spawn an intense interest in competency-based models of professional education at the turn of this century. However, many of today's practicing health professionals were never educated in these newer competencies during their own training. Co-production and co-creation of learning among interprofessional health care professionals across the continuum can help close the gap in acquiring needed competencies for health care today and tomorrow. Co-learning may be a particularly effective strategy to help organizations achieve the triple aim of better population health, better health care, and lower costs. Structured frameworks, such as the Standards for Quality Improvement Reporting Excellence (SQUIRE) guidelines, provide guidance in the design, planning, and dissemination of interventions designed to improve care through co-production and co-learning strategies.