CMS

Interprofessional Continuing Education (ICPE) Program

Mission Statement

Best outcomes in everything we do, together delivering the best healthcare for children.

Nationwide Children’s Hospital (NCH) is committed to providing the highest quality of care to all children and their families regardless of ability to pay. NCH strives to offer pre-eminent clinical and research programs through a comprehensive, integrated pediatric healthcare delivery system. Education is a key strategy by which NCH fulfills this mission.

The Interprofessional Continuing Education Program (IPCE) leads development, deployment, and assessment of a comprehensive array of evidence-based educational services which enhance healthcare professionals’ ability to provide outstanding patient care, maintain and improve patients’ and the community’s health, and continuously advance patient outcomes through research and quality improvement. The IPCE Program at NCH is specifically designed to improve interprofessional, team-based collaborative healthcare education and practice. The NCH IPCE Program devotes expertise and resources to:

1. Prepare current and future generations of healthcare professionals and their teams, to deliver high quality, safe, effective, efficient, timely, compassionate, patient/family-centered, equitable team-based care of children and adults with childhood conditions and their families.

Continuously update knowledge, competence, and/or performance of a diverse array of professionals and teams.
Offer multi-dimensional quality improvement educational initiatives that enhance individual, team and system performance.
Enhance leadership skills and facilitate career development of healthcare professionals.

2. Better manage high risk populations and reduce healthcare disparities

Equip professionals with tools to identify and meet the unique needs of children with complex needs and their families and adults with congenital diseases and conditions.
Reduce healthcare disparities by providing professionals with information relevant to their patient population.

3. Promote a common standard of pediatric care throughout the healthcare delivery system

Promote interprofessional collaborative practice through team-based learning and healthcare delivery.
Partner with hospitals, other care providers, and practices to enhance patient care.
Share unique expertise and outcomes developed at NCH through local/regional/national/ international education.

4. Disseminate research results to contribute new knowledge and improve the health of patients with childhood diseases and conditions.

Reduce barriers to translation of evidence-based research and quality improvement into clinical practice.
Share advances in basic science to accelerate scientific breakthroughs.

Services & Activities

Healthcare is best delivered by interprofessional teams working toward common goals and supported by the environment in which they deliver care. Educational activities are developed to address practice gaps of individual professionals and the healthcare team by aligning education with models of collaborative practice. Educational opportunities are identified from the best available clinical, research, quality, safety and healthcare system information and scientific evidence.

Joint providership and educational collaborations are undertaken when the partnership enables NCH to better fulfill its educational mission by focusing on practice gaps, incorporating innovative learning strategies, promoting collaborative learning amongst teams, and tracking activity outcomes to continually improve performance in practice.

Commercial support is solicited according to the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) Standards for Commercial Support. The IPCE Program determines all commercial support terms and conditions and oversees all funds.

Expected Results

The IPCE Program at NCH utilizes a multi-factorial approach to expected results. It strives to translate data into information by systematically tracking results as outlined below. The goal is to correlate education offerings with outcomes in order to identify which tactics are achieving desired results and which need new interventions.

The NCH Quality-Safety Strategic Plan seeks to improve care in 5 domains:

Keep Us Well – care that is accessible and coordinated for all patients and families
Navigate my Care – care that is timely, efficient, and coordinated
Do Not Harm Me – elimination of preventable harm
Heal Me/Cure Me by transforming outcomes of acute and/or chronic illnesses
Treat Me With Respect, assuring care is patient-centered and equitable

The IPCE Program tracks educational offerings in each domain. Outcomes may be identified at an individual, activity, service line, program, institutional, and/or healthcare system level based upon available data.

The IPCE Program also tracks identified professional practice gaps and the applicable changes to:

Collaborative Practice

Communication skills (Interpersonal and Professional)
Values/Ethics and Professionalism
Roles/Responsibilities
Teamwork and Team-based care

Clinical Practice

Diagnostic approaches
Wellness/screening processes
Treatment and/or management protocols
Clinical procedures
Patient education and/or self-management guidance
Patient Care and Procedural Skills

Data Driven Decision Making

Quality Improvement
Practice-based Learning and Improvement
Informatics
Systems-based Practice
Evidence-based Practice

Impact is measured by improvements in professional’s and/or team’s knowledge, competence, and/or performance; patient and population health outcomes; organizational performance; and pediatric healthcare system and organizational performance and research is integrated throughout the continuum of medical education and pediatric practice.