ATLANTA—The Byrdine F. Lewis School of Nursing and Health Professions has been awarded a three-year, $1,146,189 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration to develop a new interprofessional model for graduate nursing education.
This new model of interprofessional education is aimed at improving coordination of patient care for individuals with multiple chronic conditions.
"This grant allows us to prepare health professionals to work together, to collaborate in caring for people who are aging and have multiple chronic conditions," said Margaret Moloney, project director and associate professor of nursing. "Georgia is a medically underserved state, with very ethnically diverse residents and an aging population which has multiple chronic conditions."
Over the next three years, up to 60 graduate nursing students in the Lewis School, with graduate students in respiratory therapy, nutrition, physical therapy and social work, will work together in a clinical course taught by faculty who are clinical health experts in these programs. They will also learn from Georgia State's gerontology faculty.
The school will add matching funds ($63,495) to cover some graduate research assistant and staff salaries.
"It is so important to maximize nurses' time in patient care, and interprofessional collaboration allows them to do so," says Moloney. She says the pilot grant program aims to be the best example of how interprofessional collaboration can work.
"We are fortunate to have the strength of student and faculty diversity, as well as practice diversity within our faculty," she said.
An estimated 60 million Americans have multiple chronic conditions. That number is expected to rise to 81 million in the next six years, becoming a major healthcare challenge.
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