My current position (and for the past 23 years) is as Professor and Vice Chair for Education at a
college of pharmacy. We have three departments: Pharmacy Practice and Science
(my department; we are all clinicians, caring for individual patients), Pharmaceutical
Science (basic scientists, mostly web lab type research) and Pharmaceutical Health
Services Research (faculty who do research on public health initiatives). I
would say that the College of Pharmacy is primarily an organization-centric
entity. However, our new President is extremely keen on the idea of
interprofessional education. We are in our infancy exploring this. We are still
in the infancy of interprofessional education within MY school, let along
collaborating with the other schools (medicine, nursing, dentistry, social
work, law, graduate school). Even the faculty complain that we tend to work in
silo’s, which is a darned shame. It's an organization environment that is very steeped in tradition.
As a clinical pharmacist, my areas of expertise are pain
management and palliative care (caring for patients at the end of their life).
Within the profession of pharmacy, notably within my specialty, I would say my
personal learning curve has been drastically accelerated through social media and the
decentralized organizational approach I have been involved with through several
resources. First, other pain and palliative care pharmacists across the US and I participate in an
invitation only Facebook page that does a brisk business. For example, I
reached out to my colleagues about a month ago for any help in developing a
proposal for a pre-operative pain clinic I’m developing. Within hours I had
numerous resources that helped me develop the proposal that will hopefully lead
to a significant grant. Just this week another colleague asked if I could pass
along what I’d learned and developed so he could do something similar at his
hospital in Florida.Last, I not only follow learning and development professionals on Twitter, I also follow practitioners in pain and palliative care. This has helped me stay “cutting edge” with new developments, and in my practice the physicians and nurses expect me to be “a step ahead.” So, in summary, I believe within my profession we are network centric. Within my 150+ year old College of Pharmacy, we are clearly organization centric, but rebels like me are pushing the boundaries!!
Lynn,
ReplyDeleteI feel that I share some of your same experiences. Working in a field that is organization-centric (university, or higher ed), but with other professionals excited to explore a network-centric possibilities. I don't think we'll see organizations disappear, but I do think we'll see the strict boundaries of organizations be blurred by a shift to network-centric environments. Increasingly efficient technological solutions to mobile networking, combined with advantages that can occur with the stability of an organization will lead to a model that is not on either far end of the spectrum, but instead is likely somewhere in-between.
Hi Lynn,
ReplyDeleteGreat post! "It's an organization environment that is very steeped in tradition." The phrase "If it is not broke, why fix it" comes to mind as, but it perfectly describes health professional educators. Our Dean at CCBC-SHP is also very keen to inter-professional education as well. I have been charged with the task coordinating such events as well and know how hard it can be break down those "Silo's" and get everybody to come together and work together.
We have ran a few inter-professional activities with simulating a patient encounter and the students have loved it and wish there were more opportunities to do more of it. Good luck moving forward on trying to include more inter-professional education into your curriculum. I would to love to hear more about how it works out.
Hi Lynn
ReplyDeleteEvery organization needs its rebels to facilitate change and keep them viable! As steeped as they are in long traditions, even colleges and universities are slowly coming to at least learning about and looking at network-centric tools they can use to stay current.
It is really interesting how many of the people within these institutions are already enmeshed
in social media for collaboration while their parent organization still grinds through the old, "tried and true" methodologies.
Keep pushing those boundaries!