Interprofessional education about patient decision support in specialty care

Abstract

Specialty care involves services provided by health professionals who focus on treating diseases affecting one body system. In contrast to primary care – aimed at providing continuous, comprehensive care – specialty care often involves intermittent episodes of care focused around specific medical conditions. In addition, it typically includes multiple providers who have unique areas of expertise that are important in supporting patients’ care. Interprofessional care involves multiple professionals from different disciplines collaborating to provide an integrated approach to patient care. For patients to experience continuity of care across interprofessional providers, providers need to communicate and maintain a shared sense of responsibility to their patients. In this article, we describe challenges inherent in providing interprofessional patient decision support in specialty care. We propose ways for providers to engage in interprofessional decision support and discuss promising approaches to teaching an interprofessional decision support to specialty care providers. Additional evaluation and empirical research are required before further recommendations can be made about education for interprofessional decision support in specialty care.

Keywords::

• Decision support
• interprofessional education
• patient involvement
• specialty care
• patient involvement
• decision support

Acknowledgements

A report entitled ‘Interprofessional education about patient decision support in specialty care’ was presented at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice’s 2008 Summer Institute on Informed Patient Choice. Funding for the conference was made possible in part by 1R13HS017378-01 from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and in part by the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making. We thank Summer Roberts, M. A. for her helpful suggestions on this paper.

Declaration of interest

The views expressed in written conference materials or publications and by speakers and moderators do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the Department of Health and Human Services; nor does mention of trade names, commercial practices, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. In addition, Dr. Politi is on the US Prescription Medication Adherence Advisory Board (Merck).