Advanced Fellowship in Interprofessional Patient Safety

The team is composed of a clinician or researcher in any health care or related discipline, a nurse, pharmacist, and physician.

• Fellows participate in the VA National Center for Patient Safety’s Fellow orientation course, the IHI online open school curriculum on patient safety and quality improvement, and select classes at the Medical College of Wisconsin, in addition to clinical practice, assigned readings, and projects in quality improvement, innovation, and/or research.
• Outcomes: one group project and an individual project.
• The team is expected to disseminate their patient safety knowledge and experience through educational activities at the Milwaukee VAMC and publications.
• Graduates are expected to assume leadership roles in patient safety.

Fellowship Overview

Interprofessional education can facilitate health care professionals’ and researchers’ understanding about each other’s role in patient care and promote effective communication skills in complex health care systems (Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel, 2016; Institute of Medicine, 2003, 2015; World Health Organization, 2010). 

To date, over 35 nurse, pharmacist and physician fellows have graduated from the fellowship and taken leadership positions in patient safety, performance improvement and academia. Patient safety training using an interprofessional framework leads to professionals who are competent in their ability to collaborate interprofessionally and foster improvements in patient safety. Sample of educational sources and content areas are illustrated below. 

The program is held at the Milwaukee VA medical center and the Medical College of Wisconsin. The medical center delivers primary, secondary, and tertiary care to Veterans with over 723,000 outpatient visits and 10,000 hospitalized patients annually. Treatment programs include substance abuse rehabilitation, psychiatric rehabilitation, post-traumatic stress disorder treatments, a spinal cord injury / disorder unit, and a women’s health clinic, among many specialty areas.