Plenary - The Clinical Learning Environment: Where Practice and Education Collide and Shape the Future of Health Care

Why are we giving the Clinical Learning Environment (CLE) center stage at the 2019 Nexus Summit? 

Isn’t the CLE “just” where we precept students and prepare them for practice?  Yes, and also, think bigger, much bigger. The CLE is the critical intersection between the current and future workforce in healthcare. It is where new generations and likely new professions will envision and craft new ways of delivering health care while mentoring and influencing each other.  We need to think bigger and ask different questions:  Who will be in the evolving CLE spaces together?  What role do patients and families play? How do administrators, students, practitioners, patients, and educators create CLE spaces that benefit and enrich all who enter - spaces in which everyone is a learner and innovator, including the patient? What new workflows, workforce roles, and patient outcomes will emerge? 

We are grateful to the participants of the national symposium on Achieving the Optimal Interprofessional Clinical Learning Environment for launching this conversation and to the symposium convener, the National Collaborative for Improving the Clinical Learning Environment (NCICLE) for joining the National Center as co-host of the 2019 Nexus Summit.

To continue and advance this important work, we have brought together a collision of voices and perspectives to kick off the dialogue about CLEs at the Nexus Summit 2019. They and their work in CLEs will help us and push us to “think bigger and think differently.” Erin Fraher, a self-professed “data agitator”, will set the stage with a provocative look at what the future workforce will look like in a redesigned health care system.  Her presentation will provide a level-setting look at the current workforce but also push us to understand how new care and payment delivery models will demand new approaches to educating, regulating and deploying a “workforce for health”.  Following Dr. Fraher, a panel of leaders from practice and education from different professions will talk about what they are doing to create better CLEs.  Each of them is shaping the future of CLEs and with them, the future of health care. 

We look forward to your participation and contribution to this dialogue and important work ahead of us all.