As U.S. healthcare increasingly adopts team-based care, medical schools are working to prepare students for future care delivery models, according to a Feb. 18 article from the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Team-based care, or a coordinated balance of physicians focusing on the most complex cases and other healthcare professionals handling more routine care, is growing as the U.S. physician shortage worsens. Several hospital systems are investing in this model, from outlining the care model in strategic plans shared with boards of directors to launching team-based care projects and allotting millions of dollars in capital investments.
In December, the American Hospital Association highlighted “redesign[ing] staffing models and workflow with team-based approaches” as one of five industry-leading workforce priorities.
Medical schools and academic medical centers are aiming to meet workforce demands for team-based care through interprofessional education, according to the AAMC. Interprofessional education has gone from a “nice to have” pilot to a “mainstream” expectation, according to Lisa Howley, PhD, the AAMC’s senior director for transforming medical education.
“No matter what field of medicine you go into, you’re not the Lone Ranger,” David Brown, MD, professor and founding chief of family and community medicine at Florida International University’s Wertheim College of Medicine in Miami, told the AAMC.
Interprofessional education is an accreditation requirement for U.S. medical schools, but how medical education programs format interprofessional education differs from school to school, the AAMC said.
How team-based training and teaching are structured might depend on each medical school’s surrounding community. For example, a university with an allied health professionals program might approach interprofessional education differently than a school without one.
“Everybody works in teams these days, so our students are getting an early experience of actually having a team to work with,” said Dr. Brown, who helped create a required interdisciplinary, service-learning program at FIU.
Read the AAMC’s article here.
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