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A Review and Recommendations
This comprehensive white paper and collection of use cases, co-authored by CareQuest Institute and 19 academic institutions, explore interprofessional education (IPE) in health care, with a particular focus on oral health. The authors find that IPE is essential to foster collaborative, patient-centered health care, writing:
By fostering collaboration among health care professionals and emphasizing the importance of oral-systemic health connections, IPE can break down traditional silos that have separated dental care from general health care.”
Key takeaways include:
- Integrating oral health into IPE can address systemic health issues such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory infections, all of which have connections to oral health.
- Nearly all (96%) dental schools engage in IPE activities. Professions that collaborate with dental and dental hygiene students include behavioral health, nursing, pharmacy, primary care, and social work.
- Recommendations include advocating for centralized university-wide IPE offices; fostering a culture of IPE within dental schools; and aligning IPE with workforce development and career readiness.
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For IPE to fulfill its potential, the authors note, there is a need for improved assessment tools, increased representation of oral health in IPE research, and flexible, yet standardized, implementation strategies.
You may also be interested in:
- Oral-Systemic Interactions and Medical-Dental Integration: A Life Course Approach, a report that provides a comprehensive overview of the bidirectional nature of oral and systemic diseases across the lifespan.
- Medical-Dental-Behavioral Integration, a supplement to JDR Clinical & Translational Research, featuring nine articles that provide strong evidence for integrated health systems.
- Missed Connections: Providers and Consumers Want More Medical-Dental Integration, a visual report that examines the lack of integration between medical and oral health care and a desire for increased interprofessional collaboration.