A significant number of changes affecting health care delivery are described in the Institute of Medicine's Crossing the Quality Chasm report namely, a shift from acute to chronic care, the need to integrate a continually expanding evidence base and technological innovations, more clinical practice occurring in teams, complex delivery arrangements, and changing patient–clinician relationships.
In response to the changes, the Chasm report stresses that the health care workforce needs adequate preparation. Responding to the changing needs of populations and making use of new knowledge requires that health professionals develop new skills and assume new roles. This requires educating, in both academic and the practice settings, health professionals differently.
With this objective in mind, the Institute of Medicine held the Health Professions Education Summit on June 17-18, 2002. The event convened over 150 national experts in health professions education, regulation, quality, health policy, and industry to discuss and develop strategies for restructuring health professions education to advance quality and better prepare health care professionals to practice in the 21st-century health system.
Webcast and Written Transcripts of Plenary Sessions
The plenary sessions of the two-day summit were generously broadcast by KaiserNetwork.org.
Skills and Barriers Papers
Registered participants pre-selected their work group from one of the five skill areas for day one. Before the summit convened, each participant read the skills and barrier paper, prepared by the project team, that was specific to the chosen workgroup. To review these documents click on the corresponding links: Patient-Centered Care, Interdisciplinary Teams, Evidence-Based Practice, Quality Improvement, and Informatics. Updated versions of these papers have been incorporated into: Health Professionals Education: A Bridge to Quality.