Integrating Transdisciplinary Education at Cornell Hunter (ITEACH)

Theme: Interprofessional Education and Teamwork, Education for the Care of Underserved Populations

Institution: Research Foundation of the City University of New York

Grant Type: Board Grant

Award Amount: $868,003

Grant Awarded: January 2011

Principal Investigator: Joyce P. Griffin-Sobel, PhD, RN, AOCN, CNE, ANEF; Carol Storey-Johnson MD

Grant Description

Health care is a team process, yet each profession has traditionally educated its students in isolation.  Partly in light of the Macy Foundation’s 2009 report, Revisiting the Medical School Educational Mission at a Time of Great Expansion, ITEACH proposes to demonstrate and institutionalize an innovative and sustainable program of integrated, transdisciplinary educational experience. It will provide nursing, public health, social work, and medical students with refined competencies in collaborative patient-centered teamwork in order to provide high quality health care, especially to underserved patient populations in community and other practice-based settings.  The grant represents a joint venture between the Hunter College Schools of Nursing, Public Health, and Social Work and the Weill Cornell Medical College. 

Investigators aim to increase understanding of the values of the different professional identities and enhance collaborative behavior in order to improve the delivery of patient care.  To achieve this, they will create, pilot and refine an innovative transdisciplinary experiential educational program in simulated and clinical settings that: 

a) provides students from each of the participating health professions regularly scheduled “doses” of experiential learning in high quality health care team collaboration

b) provides educational experiences to develop multi-level interventions that address environmental influences on patient health and the health of communities

Using innovative pedagogies, students will learn collaborative communication and teamwork skills, essential to patient safety outcomes.

Transdisciplinary collaborative experiences with health professional students of diverse backgrounds within Hunter and Weill Cornell will help to increase communication skills across cultures, provide effective role models within the community as students-in-training for the health professions, and serve as a health care resource to the community-based populations with whom they will work.