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Nursing Professor Robert Dorman Contributes to RBJ Story on Integrated Health Care
Local health care ed curriculums emphasize integrated, ‘interprofessional’ approach
By: Caurie Putnam | October 26, 2022
The American Psychological Association defines integrated health care as an approach to care characterized by a high degree of collaboration and communication among health professionals.
Also sometimes referred to as interprofessional health care, it spans healthcare disciplines from nursing and primary care to behavioral health and specialties — connecting them whenever possible for the benefit of the patient.
“For me, integrated care is asking: ‘What can we do for our clients to ensure they can meet the goals they set for themselves?’” said Cory Crane, associate professor in the Department of Clinical Health Professions in the College of Health Sciences and Technology at the Rochester Institute of Technology. “The integrated health model doesn’t start at the clinical level, but at the training level.”
Across the Rochester region, colleges and universities with healthcare programs instruct their students about the importance and impact of integrated care on a daily basis via curriculum, clinical activities, and research. The Rochester Business Journal asked three area schools for some examples of how they’re teaching integrated care.
Below is the story content from the interview with Robert Dorman, director of traditional and graduate nursing programs and associate professor at Roberts Wesleyan University.
At Roberts Wesleyan University, undergraduate nursing students are formally introduced to the concept of integrated care in their sophomore years in the Introduction to Professional Nursing Concepts course.
“If we think about integrated care as the care of mind, body, and person, it’s the backbone of our education here,” said Robert Dorman, director of traditional and graduate nursing programs and associate professor at Roberts Wesleyan. “We start our students early with teaching them about integrated care and how important it is to be collaborative, because collaborative care is a form of integrated care.”
Among the health-related programs offered at Roberts Wesleyan are nursing, social work, public health, health administration, and occupational therapy. Every spring, the university brings students from the health disciplines and criminal justice program together for a large-scale, hands-on simulation training event. One of the goals is to show students that the health and mental health care professions do not “work in silos,” Dorman said.
For their 2021 Interprofessional Education Simulation Training during a day in April, the school ran three live simulations consisting of ten patient-focused scenarios. The setting was a simulated emergency department with student nurses acting as emergency department nurses caring for patient volunteers with varying medical needs, including severe trauma and critical injuries.
Designated patients also served as simulated crime victims or perpetrators being investigated by criminal justice students acting as the police and at least one patient needed emergent transport to a higher level of care via Mercy Flight, which was on site for the training.
“The experience gets our students to think outside the world of nursing,” Dorman said. “We train them to be great nurses, but patients have many needs and when we have a simulation like this in place it’s a win-win for everyone.”