We would like to offer a bit of our perspective and support for the growing movement towards interprofessional education and team-based care.
Nursing is an essential to delivering high-quality, team-based care and nurses are often the glue that holds a team together.
In that light, Susan Chapman, RN, PhD, MPH wrote an insightful letter in Academic Medicine, the journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges, responding to the questions "What is a nurse?" and "What is a doctor?"
Dr. Chapman's answer is simple: "these are the wrong questions to be asking at this moment in time." Health care is too technically complex, with too many patients, in too many settings, and with too few providers, requiring nurses, physicians, and policy makers to focus on patient care first.
She argues that we need greater teamwork, in the clinic, at the bedside, and in the policy-making world between all kinds of health care providers to ensure that America's patients and families all have appropriate access to health care, now and in the future.
Read the full article here.
"Right now, we have an opportunity to shape perception and practice so that every profession can be called humanitarian, so that oral health is about more than teeth, and so that pharmacists provide patient education and medication management as full-fledged members of the health care team. The policy changes we face—and our country’s needs for health care—demand that we stand shoulder to shoulder to meet them." - Susan Chapman, RN, PhD, MPH
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