The three-part mission of UC Irvine Health Affairs – to discover, teach, and heal – is a virtuous cycle that yields continuous quality improvement in research, education, and service. One of our highest priorities is to educate the diverse healthcare workforce of the future to deliver whole-person, data-driven, team-based care.

We innovate in interprofessional education and practice (IPE&P) through a wide array of scenarios so future healthcare professionals from different disciplines can deliver care in teams, each contributing at the top of their license, benefiting patients through their collective expertise.

The rationale for IPE&P is clear – enhancing quality and safety by placing the patient at the center of focus and eliminating outdated hierarchies among providers that contribute to poor communication and suboptimal outcomes – but implementation across the nation has lagged.

All the UCI Health Affairs units, inclusive of the schools in the Susan & Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences, the UCI Centers and Institutes of Health, and our delivery system UCI Health, operate together in an alliance we call ONE HEALTH. To foster collaborations, we are breaking down the silos that separate doctors, nurses, pharmacists, public health experts, allied health providers, and our full time basic, translational and clinical investigators. IPE&P fits perfectly into this world view. Therefore, we see it as essential that our students learn this approach from the beginning of their journey.

At UCI, IPE&P started with medical and nursing students practicing delivery of emergency care in our state-of-the-art simulation center in the School of Medicine more than ten years ago. Now, with the opening of a second trailblazing simulation center located in the new Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing and Health Sciences Hall, we demonstrate again our commitment to increasing access to IPE&P for all our students, faculty, and staff.

For this first edition of Healthcare Workforce Pathways, we interviewed some of our stellar faculty to shine a light on the innovative work coming out of our simulation centers. Featured in this Q&A are: