Ellington

This June, a handful of UW medical and nursing students will have the opportunity to get more hands-on experience thanks to the new Center of Excellence in Primary Care Education (CEPCE) that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has funded.

The VA will supply $5 million over five years as part of their New Models of Care initiative that aims to develop team-based methods to prepare students in primary care (PC) and improve PC throughout the nation. This year, five UW students will partake in the program at the VA Puget Sound Seattle division, located in the southern area of Seattle. After the three-year program, the students will have more than 1,000 hours of clinical learning experience.

Most frequently, PC is the first step of the health-care system. It involves the widest scope of health care, and primary care practitioners typically have a wide understanding in multiple areas of health care in order to better accommodate the wide variety of patients they see.

Dr. Nancy Fugate Woods, UW professor of biobehavioral nursing and Dean Emeritus at the UW School of Nursing, said she is excited about the program and the education it will provide students in a shifting medical world.

“The complexity of problems people have has increased,” Wood explained. “We have an aging population [and] people who have many chronic illnesses and complicated situations.”

Currently, Woods and others involved in the production of the CEPCE believe that medical students are trained in PC but lack education that allows them to experience how vital it is for doctors and nurses to communicate effectively with each other. After speaking with students and getting feedback from medical personnel that students could be better prepared for PC, the UW and the VA medical center in Seattle applied to be one of the locations of a CEPCE.

“What we are seeing is a big change in how complicated it is to get good care,” Woods said.

This model of team-based learning will allow students in nursing, medical, and pharmacy programs to work together to provide better care for patients. This new learning process is unique because it trains students of different disciplines to work together adequately to become competent PC providers.

Laurie Angelo, nurse practitioner and co-director of the CEPCE, is hopeful that the program will more adequately prepare students.

“What’s unprecedented and groundbreaking about this is that it really brings the disciplines together,” Angelo said. “Having providers who know how to work on a team is really key.”

Dr. Sarah Shannon specializes in ethics and communication in interprofessional education at the UW. Interprofessional education highlights the importance of being able to understand the duties and expectations of medical professionals that a student will eventually collaborate with and trains students to maintain open and effective communication with them.

Shannon said she thinks the CEPCE will help improve interprofessional learning, and said it’s one of the things many people in the department were hoping for.

Angelo expressed her concern with inadequate training, and said she thinks the program will benefit the students participating it.

“Frequently, the current training programs do not sufficiently prepare medical and nursing students, so when they work in the area they are frequently besieged by the workload and necessity to rely on others,” Angelo said. “It’s too overwhelming, so they don’t want to do it. There is a national shortage for primary care providers.”

The center will benefit patients as well. Patients will experience more personal care and familiarity with their doctors and nurses because the students in the program will have a consistent stream of patients who they consistently see during the clinical learning portions of the program.

“This isn’t just about our students,” Shannon said. “Patients will get … different and better care.”

As the program grows, it will be changed to be more efficient and enroll more students. Wood explained that the program will eventually accept 10 students per year.

Angelo hopes students will ultimately be required to experience teamwork training in order to graduate and that the program will set an example for other medical schools.

“The goal of this is to transform primary care education,” she said.

Reach reporter Daron Anderson at news@dailyuw.com.