As a soon-to-be graduate of the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing and a board member at the Student Run Health Clinic at Case Western Reserve University, Lauren Myers draws from experience when she emphasizes the importance of team-based health care to other students at the health clinic. It's a concept she's come to appreciate during her time in collaborative care settings and interprofessional training sessions.
"You're thinking completely differently about your role in health care," Lauren told a group of several dozen medical, nursing and social work students gathered recently at the Student Run Health Clinic. "You're trained in medical school how to diagnose or in nursing school how to care for a patient or in social work how to care for those social needs. (In an interprofessional clinical experience) You're challenging yourself to really think outside of the box of what you're taught in the classroom and to reach past all of that to really embrace interprofessionalism. I think it's really important that people are learning this while they're in school. Embedding all of this into our training is really beneficial and I think it will prepare us to be the best clinicians that we can be."