A MULTISITE COLLABORATIVE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTERDISCIPLINARY EDUCATION IN CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT FOR HEALTH-PROFESSIONS STUDENTS

In 1994, The Institute for Healthcare Improvement, in Boston, Massachu setts, formed the Interdisciplinary Professional Education Collaborati ve (the Collaborative). The mission of the Collaborative is to create an interdisciplinary teaching and learning environment in which future health professionals learn to work together to improve health care de livery. Apart from emphasizing interdisciplinary collaboration, the Co llaborative focuses on teaching the methods of continuous improvement (CI), a system of management first developed for manufacturing industr ies that is increasingly being used in the management of health care d elivery. The Collaborative consists of four local interdisciplinary te ams (LITs): the Cleveland LIT, the ''George'' LIT (a collaboration bet ween George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and George Maso n University in Fairfax, Virginia), the South Carolina LIT, and the Pe nnsylvania LIT; and a coordinating committee. This paper describes eac h LIT's approach to achieving the Collaborative's commitment to give h ealth professions students the opportunity to work in interdisciplinar y teams to learn about and practice CI methods, training the Collabora tive believes will enable them to be effective providers in a variety of health care systems. The paper describes the overall goals of the C ollaborative, presents reports from the four LITs, and discusses commo n lessons learned.