As a new associate member of Joint Accreditation for Interprofessional Continuing Educationopens in new window, APA is joining representatives from medicine, nursing, pharmacy and other fields in overseeing the accreditation of organizations that offer interprofessional continuing education, including the Mayo Clinic, Boston Children’s Hospital and the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Health Services Division.
The development—which promises to significantly increase the number and quality of continuing-education (CE) offerings that psychologists have access to—is a boon for the field, for individual psychologists who work in these settings and for health care as a whole, says Greg Neimeyer, PhD, director of APA’s Office of Continuing Education in Psychology.
APA representatives will function as members of the interprofessional accreditation team that reviews applicants for the Joint Accreditation program. As more organizations become jointly accredited, psychologists employed in those settings will have expanded opportunities to receive, play a part in and get credit for team-based CE. "It’s a fabulous opportunity for us to break out of the silo that has kept us apart from mainstream health care and contribute to something larger than us," Neimeyer says.
As APA and other professions work to develop and improve the CE offerings of participating organizations and applicants, the most important criterion is that they are team-based—designed so that all relevant players in a given training topic are fully involved. That’s important for health-care professionals and for patients, says Kathy Chappell, PhD, RN, senior vice president at the American Nurses Credentialing Center, one of the program’s three founding organizations.
"There’s a lot of evidence showing that when the health-care team isn’t working together, medical errors can occur and patients lose out," Chappell says.
As a new APA reviewer for Joint Accreditation and a pediatric psychologist who’s worked collaboratively with other professions at the Medical University of South Carolina, Susan J. Simonian, PhD, ABPP, says the program is a vital step toward improving health communication and patient care.
"APA’s role with Joint Accreditation will help to formalize this kind of team-based education," Simonian says, "and support psychologists to receive, promote and develop quality CE that includes an evidence-based psychological perspective."
The list of organizations accredited by Joint Accreditation for Interprofessional Continuing Education is available at www.jointaccreditation.org/accredited-providersopens in new window.
