Interprofessional education—learning alongside health-care professionals from other disciplines as a way to improve patient-centered care—is fast becoming an accreditation requirement for many health-care professions. In fact, by 2014, 92 percent of medical schools required their students to receive such education.
Psychology has been slower than other disciplines to get on board with such training, largely because it's such a diverse field. Now, that's changing. Universities are beginning to offer interprofessional education to students, while training opportunities for practitioners are opening up nationwide, including a federally funded program that offers training for thousands of psychology practitioners. And APA's latest accreditation standards require that doctoral students be exposed to interdisciplinary and interprofessional interaction during their academic program.
"There is no question that psychology is now at the table" as a player in interprofessional health care and education, says Barbara Brandt, PhD, director of the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education (NCIPE) at the University of Minnesota, which provides interprofessional training and resources for all health-care disciplines. "I've seen some amazing implementations across the United States with psychology involved."
Starting with students
At Tennessee State University, psychology and other health-care students are taking part in a program where they're learning together from the get-go. Students in 10 health-care disciplines, including psychology, receive an intensive four-day educational immersion during their first year, and over time become immersed in hands-on interprofessional experiences at practica, internships and other sites. In addition, the university's department of family medicine was awarded a $1.7 million grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to create and educate students and faculty in innovative models of team-based care.
Intimately involved in this work is psychologist Jodi Polaha, PhD, who educates students and faculty in all health disciplines on effective collaborative care.
The work is making a big difference in the lives of the low-income rural patients served at the university's clinic because providers are better able to ascertain and address patient needs, Polaha says. "In my experience, the more similar our language is around our shared goals for our patients and our shared vision around what team-based care should look like, the better."
Counseling psychology doctoral students at New Mexico State University (NMSU) have been learning together with students in nursing, social work, pharmacy and family medicine since 2004, thanks to funding from HRSA's Graduate Psychology Education Program. The NMSU program features interprofessional team-building, and academic and clinical experiences that prepare students to work in rural and other settings where access to mental health care is often provided through primary care clinics.
Such education and training means students are highly prepared to work on integrated teams when they head off to internships and jobs, says NMSU counseling psychology professor and training director Eve Adams, PhD. "Many of our students end up with jobs in the Veterans Administration, health-care centers, prisons with integrated-care programs, and other sites that enable them to continue this work."
In an effort to guide interprofessional education, last year APA also released a free online curriculum for a seminar in integrated care for all health professional students, including psychology students. The curriculum consists of eight modules, which instructors can use together or individually, covering such topics as the rationale for integrated care, population health approaches, team leadership and working with other disciplines.
Continuing education
Interprofessional training opportunities for practicing psychologists are burgeoning as well. In 2016, APA received a $2 million award from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation that will be used to train 6,000 practicing psychologists in interprofessional care delivery. It's part of a larger Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services program called the Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative, which will help 140,000 clinical practices nationwide share, adapt and further develop comprehensive strategies to improve care and reduce costs.
Interprofessional training for practicing psychologists is springing up in other venues as well:
- Each June, the University of Rochester offers a five-day intensive trainingopens in new window on integrated care and working with families.
- Cherokee Health Systems, a federally qualified health-care center in Knoxville, Tennessee, provides two-day trainingopens in new window academies in integrated care.
- The University of Michigan School of Social Work offers web-based coursesopens in new window in integrated behavioral health and primary care, including pediatric, adult and combined pediatric/adult tracks.
- NCIPEopens in new window hosts an annual conference and other training for providers who want to gain better interprofessional skills.
- The Interprofessional Education Collaborativeopens in new window, a network of professional education associations that has developed interprofessional competencies and other guidance for universities, professional schools and employers of health care providers, offers regular faculty development institutes in interprofessional education and collaborative care.
- APA and the American Diabetes Association offer a two-day training on the behavioral management of diabetes.
As psychologists grow more established in integrated care, a vital part of their work must include effectively communicating their expertise to key stakeholders in hospitals and other health-care settings, area leaders emphasize. Contrary to public perception, providing direct clinical services in these settings is not the only task that psychologists are hired or want to be hired for: They also may supervise master's-level clinicians who do the frontline work, train interns, develop and evaluate programs, consult on complex cases and facilitate team functioning, to name just a few roles.
"The more we can highlight our value, the more leadership will want that skill set in their institutions," says Wendy Ward, PhD, who co-directs a 30-hour mandated interprofessional care education program at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
In fact, psychologists bring a perspective that is precisely in the direction that health care is moving toward: looking at the whole person in his or her family and cultural context rather than as a patient with an illness.
