Continuing professional development for interprofessional teams supporting patients in healthcare decision making

By | 14th November 2011



Great article on interprofessional teams supporting patients in healthcare decision making   
Beth A. Lown, Jennifer Kryworuchko, Christiane Bieber, Dustin M. Lillie, Charles Kelly, Bettina Berger, and Andreas Loh.


Healthcare professionals and organizations, policy makers, and the public are calling for safe and effective care that is centered on patients’ needs, values, and preferences. The goals of interprofessional shared decision making and decision support are to help patients and professionals agree on choices that are effective, health promoting, realistic, and consonant with patients’ and professionals’ values and preferences. This requires collaboration among professionals and with patients and their family caregivers. Continuing professional development is urgently needed to help healthcare professionals acquire the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to create and sustain a culture of collaboration. We describe a model that can be used to design, implement, and evaluate continuing education curricula in interprofessional shared decision making and decision support. This model aligns curricular goals, objectives, educational strategies, and evaluation instruments and strategies with desired learning and organizational outcomes. Educational leaders and researchers can institutionalize such curricula by linking them with quality improvement and patient safety initiatives.

For more information, please read: Journal of Interprofessional Care, 
November 2011, Vol. 25, No. 6 , Pages 401-408.