Interprofessional Education to Improve Diagnosis

Workshop Description:
In efforts to address the problem of diagnostic error, the education of healthcare professionals is being re-envisioned. The landmark report from the National Academy of Medicine on Improving Diagnosis in Healthcare made two major suggestions: Improve education around diagnosis, and improve teamwork in the diagnostic process. In a project supported by the Macy Foundation, we have recently identified a set of 12 competencies that tie these two recommendations together, and if acquired, would promote diagnostic quality and safety. Six of these relate to individual competency, three to team-related actions, and three to system-related issues. We envision that diagnosis in the future will be a team-based activity, and that to realize this revolutionary change, healthcare education needs to enable providers in every healthcare profession to contribute to diagnostic quality in a collaborative, interprofessional model that also includes the patient.

This workshop will identify the next steps in realizing this vision. The workshop leaders will introduce the goal of improving diagnosis-related education and review the 12 recommended competencies. The participants will be divided by lottery into teams of six, and each team will be asked to envision a 3-hour interprofessional educational activity to convey competency in a subset of these recommended areas: Applying effective team-based strategies to improve diagnosis and avoid diagnostic errors at transitions of care. One third of the teams will be asked to focus on Pharmacy + MD learners, one third on Pharmacy + Nursing, and the final third on Nursing + MD learners. The educational activity should specify the level of learner (targeting BSN3 or 4, DNP 3 nurses, MS 2-4 medical students), the learning objectives and strategies, and at least 1 example of a clinical scenario that could be used in the session.

Solutions and proposals will be reported and compared, and edited versions will be distributed to participants after the session.

Funding Attribution: The Macy Foundation.

Learner outcomes:
Learners will leave with
1. The complete set of 12 recommended competencies to improve diagnosis
2. An understanding of how teamwork can reduce diagnostic errors at transitions of care
3. Concrete learning plans that could be implemented in their home institutions to develop competency on this topic to interprofessional learners

Active learning strategies:
• Small-group participation to create a learning plan
• Comparing and improving learning plans created by others