​Joint Accreditation for Interprofessional Education™ Described in American Nurse Cover Story

Chicago, IL and Silver Spring, MD | October 10, 2014

The value of Joint Accreditation for Interprofessional Education™ is described in the article “All for One and One for All: Interprofessional Education Aims at Fostering Teamwork, Quality Care,” by Susan Trossman. The article, published on September 2, 2014, as the cover story in The American Nurse, the official publication of the American Nurses Association, explores the growth of interprofessional education across the continuum for students and healthcare practitioners and its increasing integration into quality and safety initiatives. IPE is designed to improve team collaboration and contribute to better patient outcomes.

Kathy Chappell, PhD, RN, Vice-President, Accreditation Program and Institute for Credentialing Research; and Director, Accreditation Program, American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), says that there is increasing interest in Joint Accreditation for Interprofessional Continuing Education, which offers organizations the opportunity to be simultaneously accredited to provide medical, pharmacy, and nursing continuing education through a single, unified application process, fee structure, and set of accreditation standards. She explains that joint accreditation enables institutions to break down silos that may exist among professionals and to improve patient outcomes. Interprofessional continuing education (IPCE) offerings typically fall into two categories, Dr. Chappell says. One aims to improve team performance, focusing on topics such as team communication and patient handouts. The other category addresses specific patient care issues, such as new interventions or treatments for cardiac patients.

In the article, several jointly accredited providers, Baystate Health and Creighton University Health Sciences Continuing Education, describe examples of the IPCE they offer and observe that the process of developing IPE is in itself a model of interprofessional collaborative practice, since various professionals not only learn together but work together to plan and implement educational activities.

Joint Accreditation was founded in 2009 by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the ANCC.