Monthly Archives: July 2015

Book Review: Evidence-Based Practice for Health Professionals: An Interprofessional Approach

While evidence-based practice (EBP) has become an essential component of training in a wide range of healthcare professions, a textbook for beginning practitioners was largely missing. Howlett, Rogo, and Shelton authored Evidence-Based Practice for Health Professionals: An Interprofessional Approach to engage student audiences from rehabilitation, medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, and public health programs. The text… Read More »

Book Review: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures

Anne Fadiman, the author and narrator of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Culture, shares the story of Lia Lee, a young Hmong girl with severe epilepsy, to demonstrate the detrimental impact of cultural misunderstanding between families and their doctors. This book… Read More »

Summary: Adherence to clinical guidelines in heart failure (HF)outpatients: Impact of an interprofessional HF team on evidence-basedmedication use

Clinical systolic heart failure (HF) guidelines specify recommendations for ACE inhibitors (ACEI), angiotensin receptor blockers (ARB) and beta blockers according to doses used in clinical trials. However, many HF patients remain suboptimally treated. Crissinger and colleagues sought to determine which provider type, between an interprofessional HF team, non-HF cardiologists and primary care physicians (PCP), most… Read More »

Summary: E-Learning with virtual teammates: A novel approach tointerprofessional education

The Institute of Medicine identified interprofessional education (IPE) as a key innovation for achieving the triple aim of better care, better outcomes and reduced health care costs. Yet, a shortage of qualified faculty and difficulty with aligning learners’ schedules often prevent sustainable and scalable IPE.  A virtual IPE intervention was developed to circumvent these barriers… Read More »

Summary: Partnership to promote interprofessional education and practicefor population and public health informatics: A case study

Team-based healthcare delivery models, which emphasize care coordination, patient engagement, and utilization of health information technology, are emerging. To achieve these models, expertise in interprofessional education, collaborative practice across professions, and informatics is essential. A recent case study by Rajamani and colleagues from informatics programs in the Academic Health Center (AHC) at the University of… Read More »

Summary: Increasing medical students’ understanding of the role ofoccupational therapists

Understanding the roles and responsibilities of different healthcare professionals allows for collaborative care to occur.  A recent study by Roberts and Shamus evaluated a student-designed, case-based educational module about the roles and responsibilities of occupational therapists (OTs) designed to increase the knowledge of occupational therapy among medical students. The study used a quasi-experimental, pre-/post-test design.… Read More »