Leadership Crucial to Success of Interprofessional Clinical Learning

A symposium discussion addresses the role of leadership and governance in shaping the attributes of an optimal interprofessional CLE.

When the National Collaborative for Improving the Clinical Learning Environment hosted a symposium in October, the goal was to identify the attributes of an optimal interprofessional CLE. The ensuing discussion addressed the role of leadership and governance in shaping those attributes.

Participants indicated that high-functioning IP-CLEs exhibit characteristics that support patient-centeredness, lifelong learning, high-quality communication, teamwork, accountability and evidence-based models. And leadership, they said, plays a vital role in successfully facilitating these characteristics, by engaging and ensuring the following:

Interprofessional representation. All members of the team — nurses, social workers, pharmacists and members of the community, for example —should have a voice in the conversation.

Alignment of missions. Working in unison, organizations can develop structures that drive optimal and high-functioning IP-CLEs.

Leadership buy-in. Consistent messaging from leaders at all organizational levels inspires buy-in of interprofessionally based collaborative care from the bottom up.

“This is about the desire to have a new interprofessional approach to clinical learning environments,” says American Association for Physician Leadership president and CEO Peter Angood, MD, who chairs the NCICLE steering committee.

Enhancing the IP-CLE is viewed as long-term initiative requiring engagement from many sectors of health care. NCICLE plans to convene a work group to expand on its initial findings.