The world we live in, as we all know, is getting smaller due to new technologies, modes of communication and patterns of population movements that crisscross the borders between disciplines and countries. These patterns have brought new innovations as well as challenges to healthcare, making it imperative to become more interdisciplinary and global. All of that places new demands on healthcare and has also challenged the status quo in education among the professions of medicine, nursing midwifery, and public health. To meet the needs of the new millennium, we have realized that we must challenge ourselves to also crisscross the borders of our minds with new knowledge from other professions, to integrate this knowledge to prepare new generations of healthcare professionals who are interprofessional and interdisciplinary.
The Lancet Commission, a group of cutting-edge thinkers from across the disciplines and the globe, has called on us to create “a new era of professional education that advances transformative learning and harnesses the power of interdependence in education, as well as to leverage knowledge advanced globally.” I proudly served with others in this group which is urging professions to learn from each other’s discoveries and challenges to shape professional education for the future and to transform the healthcare system. The objective is to meet the Millennium Development Goals for quality healthcare.
The Carnegie Foundation, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Lancet Commission, and the Institute of Medicine all produced many reports that inspire us with challenging recommendations. Let’s use these recommendations to create a future. Let’s pool and integrate our expertise for a future of better healthcare and a more humane and just healthcare system.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
A new century demands better health care education
The Commission on Education of Health Professionals for the 21st century has issued a major report calling for new ways to educate a new generation of health care professionals in a rapidly changing world.
It’s not a moment too soon for this mission. The commission, including an interdisciplinary group of 20 commissioners from around the world, has issued a series of recommendations to transform health profession education in all countries, rich and poor alike for the 21st century.
As a member of the commission and co-author of the report, it’s clear to me and everyone involved in this project that today’s health professionals are being challenged by new infectious, environmental and behavioral threats superimposed upon rapid epidemiologic and demographic transitions. To say that health systems are struggling to deal with these issues is an understatement.
The commission is calling for a new agenda to develop a common approach in post-secondary education that goes well beyond the silos of existing structures. Just as reforms in the 20th century rode to prominence on a wave of germ theory, producing the Flexner, Welch-Rose, and Goldmark reports to transform medicine, public health, and nursing, today’s education of health professionals must be shaped by a new age of transformative and independent educational approaches that include both individual and population-based approaches.
It’s time to seize the moment. Bring the health professional education system into the 21st century around the world, and educate professionals who are accountable to a social mission of just and equitable healthcare, who use global knowledge and adapt it in local situations.
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It’s not a moment too soon for this mission. The commission, including an interdisciplinary group of 20 commissioners from around the world, has issued a series of recommendations to transform health profession education in all countries, rich and poor alike for the 21st century.
As a member of the commission and co-author of the report, it’s clear to me and everyone involved in this project that today’s health professionals are being challenged by new infectious, environmental and behavioral threats superimposed upon rapid epidemiologic and demographic transitions. To say that health systems are struggling to deal with these issues is an understatement.
The commission is calling for a new agenda to develop a common approach in post-secondary education that goes well beyond the silos of existing structures. Just as reforms in the 20th century rode to prominence on a wave of germ theory, producing the Flexner, Welch-Rose, and Goldmark reports to transform medicine, public health, and nursing, today’s education of health professionals must be shaped by a new age of transformative and independent educational approaches that include both individual and population-based approaches.
It’s time to seize the moment. Bring the health professional education system into the 21st century around the world, and educate professionals who are accountable to a social mission of just and equitable healthcare, who use global knowledge and adapt it in local situations.
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.
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