Snapshot of the Impact of Interprofessional Collaboration in Practice in Diabetes Care

Abstract

H ealth care teams with a focus on patientcentered coordinated care can assist patients to make changes in health. These changes can lead to improved outcomes associated with chronic disease, such as diabetes, as demonstrated in several studies. 1-3 Barcelo and colleagues 1 compared an intensive diabetes program to usual care and the effect on A1C in 10 clinics in Mexico for a total of 307 patients. The program included training of the health care providers, cross-consultations with specialists, and case managers. The intervention group's A1C lowered from 8.4% to 7.9% (P < .01) compared to the usual care group's A1C lowering from 8.7% to 8.6% (P = .80). 1 Janson and colleagues 2 created an interprofessional team of primary care internal medicine residents, nurse practitioner students, and pharmacy students to improve the care of 384 patients with type 2 diabetes. The team received training on how to work in interprofessional teams and the Improving Chronic Illness Care (ICIC) model. The patients who received care from the interprofessional team received improved quality of care with more assessments and visits than the patients who received routine care provided by the internal medicine residents. There was a statistically significant difference in frequency of A1C assessments comparing the patients receiving care from the interprofessional team versus the internal medicine residents (79% vs 67%, P = .01). 2 Taylor and colleagues 3 created a crew management resource intervention to improve adherence to evidence-based diabetes standards of care and patient outcomes. The intervention included standardized communication methods with daily briefings and checklist development utilized for 619patients. Statistically significant improvement in adherence to diabetes process measures was found (75.23% to 82.09%, P < .001). There was an improvement seen in patient outcomes, but it was not statistically significant (42.96% to 45.34%, P = .079). 3

Integrating an Interprofessional Education Model at a Private University

“…The faculty practice team (n = 7) created and implemented a collaborative practice model for faculty and students in a clinical setting. This paper describes the implementation of the educational experience; the collaborative practice model for students is described elsewhere (Cauthon et al, 2015).…”