Evolution of an Interprofessional Training: A Five-Year Review of an Interprofessional Training Involving Family Medicine Residents, Nurse Practitioner Students, Pharmacy Trainees, Counseling Psychology, and Social Work Students in Southern New Mexico

The Affordable Care Act (ACA, 2010) embraced the “triple aim” in healthcare to enhance health, promote better care, and reduce cost. The use of healthcare teams can improve patient care, health outcomes, and reduce medical errors (Earnest & Brandt, 2014). However, building healthcare teams goes beyond placing people of different healthcare professions together, it requires the integration of the healthcare disciplines, a valuing of each other’s roles, and the ability to communicate and work together (IPEC, 2011). The term interprofessional reflects interdependence, shared responsibility, and reliance on each other to best accomplish a task. These values often run counter to traditional values of independence, individual responsibility, and siloed expertise that are still taught in many professional education programs. This article will review the development of an interprofessional training and insights learned by faculty as this training evolved. This training experience, called the Interprofessional Immersion, brought together trainees in multiple healthcare professions including family medicine residents, nurse practitioner students, pharmacy students, social work students, and counseling psychology students. This program was designed to develop the skills needed to effectively work within an interprofessional team within the field of healthcare. This article will review lessons learned from the first five years the Interprofessional Immersion was implemented