"The Patient-centered Medical Home (PCMH) has come to the forefront of primary care practice redesign and can potentially improve health care outcomes and reduce costs. There are several initiatives in medical schools to teach concepts of the PCMH to students, but it is unknown what knowledge and attitudes medical students currently possess. We report students’ awareness and opinions at two medical schools without comprehensive PCMH curricula."
"There is limited penetration of IPE into one of the foundational clinical training episodes for medical students in Liaison Committee for Medical Education–accredited schools. This may be related to misperceptions of the relative value of these experiences and limitations of curricular time. Learning in and from successful models of interprofessional teams in clinical practice may help overcome these barriers."
"The nation faces a substantial shortfall in its combined supply of physicians, APNs, and PAs, even under aggressive training scenarios, and deeper shortages if these scenarios are not achieved. Efforts must be made to expand the output of clinicians in all 3 disciplines, while also strengthening the infrastructure of clinical practice and facilitating the delegation of tasks to a broadened spectrum of caregivers in new models of care."
"In this paper, three universities, the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, the University of Florida and the University of Washington describe their training curricula models of collaborative and interprofessional education."
"Thirty-nine volunteer students from 3 health science collegesat Touro University California participated in an exercise designedto promote interprofessional collaboration. In the event, thirteen3-person multidisciplinary teams of students identified potentialmedical errors in a series of case-based scenarios. In an immediatepostevent survey, 33 of 39 respondents (85%) indicated thatthe exercise marked the first time that they had worked on clinicalproblems with students from other health professions. All respondentsagreed that interprofessional education was useful and necessary."
'The DrNP programs are typically 2 years long, including a 1-year residency, and accept individuals who have already earned a master's degree in nursing and have been licensed as a nurse practitioner. Eventually, programs will accept students with a baccalaureate nursing degree, but according to recommendations from AACN, these programs would take 3 to 4 years to complete. The programs emphasize evidence-based practice, quality improvement, and systems-level thinking, said Raines. 'We think people with the DrNP preparation will be particularly skilled at translating research into practice,' she said."
"The physician assistant (PA) profession is a nationally recognized medical profession in the United States of America (USA). However, relatively little is known regarding national trends of the PA workforce. We examined the 1980-2007 USA Census data to determine the demographic distribution of the PA workforce and PA-to-population relationships. Maps were developed to provide graphical display of the data. All analyses were adjusted for the complex census design and analytical weights provided by the Census Bureau."
"The concept of the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) was developed by primary care physicians and large employers to encourage comprehensive health care, improve patient outcomes, and lower medical costs. The PCMH approach provides comprehensive care in a setting that facilitates a partnership with the patient, via an interdisciplinary healthcare team and community resources. The current goals of the PCMH include providing high-quality preventive care and effective chronic disease management across the life span and a reimbursement structure that includes coverage for coordination of care and documentation of patient outcomes."
"An international consensus has emerged that interprofessional education (IPE) and other health care reforms are necessary to address the increasing complexity of patients' health needs. Despite overwhelming barriers to its system-wide implementation, health professional students worldwide have organized themselves to promote IPE and have achieved considerable attention. This study seeks to offer insights into what attracts students to IPE and other health care reform initiatives and how advocates of change can stimulate this interest."
"The United States (US) is faced with an aging population, projected physician shortages, and an increase in the prevalence of chronic disease, health care costs, and the number of uninsured Americans, making access to health care a leading policy issue. Since 1967, non-physician providers such as Physician Assistants (PAs) and Nurse Practitioners (NPs) have been utilized to improve access and reduce health care costs. Approximately 110,000 PAs and NPs currently practice in the United States. Fifty percent of PAs and 85% of NPs practice in primary care and are more likely than doctors to practice in rural areas and with underserved populations."
"As we reconsider the U.S. health care system, the osteopathic educational tradition should be recognized for the contribution it has made and continues to make to the physician workforce in primary care and underserved areas. The structure of today's osteopathic medical schools may be hard to distinguish from that of their allopathic counterparts, but the output of osteopathic schools remains clearly distinctive, and the nation's health care system benefits as a result."
"Those who wish to sustain the historic dichotomy between these two increasingly convergent medical professions point to the osteopathic profession's avowed commitment to primary care and to patient-centered, holistic care. To my mind, this is a distinction without a difference. After all, the calls for more attention to primary care and to patient-centeredness are as loud in the halls of allopathic medicine as anywhere."
