Dora Mills gives keynote at National Interprofessional Education Collaborative in D.C.

Dora Anne Mills, M.D., M.P.H., FAAP, UNE’s vice president for Clinical Affairs and director of the Center for Excellence in Health Innovation, delivered an invited keynote speech at the National Interprofessional Education Collaborative (National IPEC) Institute on May 4 in Washington, D.C. Her talk focused on the reasons behind interprofessional education, the connections with health care reform and public health transformation, expanding interprofessional education in clinical settings, lessons learned from experiences at UNE and tools for change management. 

Twice per year the National IPEC hosts a three-day institute for teams of leaders from 30-50 universities to learn from national leaders in interprofessional education and to plan for the expansion of curricula about effective team-based care at their institutions. This was the fifth IPEC Institute in which Mills has participated. Twice, in 2012 and 2015, she led teams from UNE to attend IPEC Institutes, and she has served as an invited keynote speaker three times -- in 2014, 2015, and this month. 

“I am very proud to represent UNE at these prestigious national conferences and to share the lessons learned from our experiences here at UNE, including the work of our many health professions faculty and students,” said Mills. "I can’t think of anything more important for health professions education programs to do. With medical errors now tragically representing our nation’s third leading cause of death, and with 80 percent of them due to poor team work, it is imperative that health professions students learn from, with and about each other in order to provide effective and safer team-based care for their patients. I am very proud that UNE is a national leader in this effort."

The National IPEC was founded in 2009 by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM), American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), the American Dental Education Association (ADEA), the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP), and the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH). It now includes nine other associations. As a collaborative, National IPEC has developed the interprofessional education competencies that form the foundation for educating students and professionals on team-based care.