Interdisciplinarity: the story of a journey

Everywhere we turn, interdisciplinarity has become a key concept guiding health care education and practice. Granting agencies call for it. Educational and health policy makers extol its virtues. Accreditation agencies across health disciplines recommend it as a competency for the present and future. But what is it? How do we get it from our educational and practice systems that are compartmentalized by claims to discipline-specific knowledge, tradition, and the flow of dollars from funding sources? What is it like after we do get it? And most of all, why would we ever want it in the first place? We have had some significant experience within our Division of Health Sciences in interdisciplinary teaching, practice, and scholarship. Our experience was initially framed by implementation of one of the seven W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Partnerships for Health Professions Education grants. The grant brought the education of medical, nursing, and other health professions students out of the hospital to interdisciplinary primary care experiences in and with the community. We will never tell you we have a straightforward prescription for success. Living interdisciplinarity, like living life itself, is something that frequently poses more questions than it answers. We will, with enthusiasm, share with you what we have learned in our unique journey together in hopes that you and your colleagues will find something useful for your own voyage into interdisciplinarity.