Background and Foreground: Connections and Distinctions When Health Professions Faculty Teach Both Interprofessional...

Area of Science:

• Health Professions Education
• Interprofessional Education
• Quality Improvement Science

Background:

• Health professions education struggles to integrate Quality Improvement (QI) and Interprofessional Collaborative Practice (ICP) competencies.
• Existing literature often addresses QI and ICP as separate domains, despite their intuitive link.
• Competency-based education requires a clear understanding of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) for both QI and ICP.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the distinctions and connections between QI and ICP competency domains within health professions education.
• To understand how faculty teaching QI and ICP perceive the integration of these two fields.
• To identify effective pedagogical approaches for teaching integrated QI and ICP competencies.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative case study approach utilizing an instrumental case at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
• Faculty from medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and health care administration were interviewed.
• Interviews focused on teaching choices in classroom and clinical settings for QI and ICP.

Main Results:

• Participants aimed to teach QI and ICP to enable safe, patient-centered care.
• Knowledge and skills were identified as crucial for QI, while attitudes and skills were key for ICP.
• The relationship between QI and ICP is mediated by systems thinking, with ICP as a prerequisite and QI as a driver for interprofessional competencies.

Conclusions:

• An integrated approach to QI and ICP competencies can reveal synergistic benefits in health professions education.
• Viewing ICP as background and QI as foreground offers a potentially effective curricular strategy.
• Integrating QI and ICP enhances the meaning and impact of both, leading to improved healthcare outcomes.