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.

The summit began with a plenary session of presentations by noted health experts and a panel discussion on caring for the chronically ill. Throughout the session, participants learned about and discussed the new skills or roles, as outlined in Crossing the Quality Chasm that health professionals need to successfully address the health for the American population:

• Patient-Centered Care:  Inform and involve patients and their families in decision making and self management; coordinate and integrate care; provide physical comfort and emotional support; understand patients' concepts of illness and their cultural beliefs; and understand and apply principles of disease prevention and behavioral change appropriate for diverse populations.
• Interdisciplinary Teams:  Cooperate, coordinate, communicate, and standardize care in teams to make care more patient-centered, continuous, and reliable.
• Evidence-Based Practice:  Integrate best research with clinical expertise and patient values.
• Quality Improvement:  Continually understand and measure quality of care in terms of structure, process, and outcomes; design and test interventions to change processes and systems of care with the objective of improving quality.
• Informatics:  Communicate, manage knowledge, and support decision making using information technology. During the first day of the summit, participants worked in small, interdisciplinary working groups to develop strategies around one of the five above-mentioned skills areas. The IOM committee then reviewed and synthesized these strategies into seven cross-cutting strategies for the reform of health professions education. During day two, participants selected one of the same strategies to where they felt the could make the most significant contribution. Working again in small, interdisciplinary groups, participants developed personal action steps that they will take over the next 1-3 years to implement the selected strategy.

The scope and intent of the over 200 action steps generated at the event varied--for example, with some individual educators pledging to design new course curricula in the coming months, while some accreditators pledged to modify and synchronize their national accrediting standards over the next several years.

The actions generated by the participants was released in a report in April 2003. The report, published by the National Academy Press, was distributed to members of Congress and federal agency representatives, as well as to experts in health professions education and regulation, quality and industry.