Dora Mills addresses National IPEC Institute

Dora Anne Mills, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.A.P., vice president for Clinical Affairs, was an invited plenary speaker in Washington D.C. at the National IPEC Institute (Interprofessional Education Collaborative), a three-day institute for university teams to plan for expanding their inter professional education.

The institutes are held twice per year and are sponsored by the associations of schools of medicine (M.D. and D.O.), nursing, dentistry, pharmacy and public health. This fall’s institute, held October 7 – 9, hosted 150 leaders from 40 universities, from South Africa to Hawaii.

Mills spoke about the opportunities health care reform provides for interprofessional education in clinical settings, including using strategies in which teams of students can add value to clinical settings, that also provide rich learning experiences, and in which students can be catalysts for change. She also shared lessons learned from UNE’s work in interprofessional education. After her one-hour plenary, she spent the rest of the day providing technical assistance to teams as they worked on their plans, which included answering a number of questions on the relationships between health care reform and interprofessional education.