Daicia Price, clinical assistant professor, and Dean Lynn Videka connect with fellow colleagues.
SOCIAL WORK FACULTY EMBRACE IPE
T
he Interprofessional Leadership Fellows program gives faculty members the opportunity to work on an interprofessional team, allowing them to gain personal experience with the IPE collaborative models. The program launched in January 2016 with fellows representing the School of Social Work along with the School of Dentistry, School of Kinesiology, Medical School, School of Nursing, College of Pharmacy, School of Public Health and UMFlint’s School of Health Professions and Studies. Michigan Social Work Field Faculty Mary Eldredge was a fellow in 2017 and matched with teammates from the School of Dentistry and the School of Nursing. Together, they created a program that focused on reducing bloodstream infections in pediatric oncology patients. Students were provided with a case study in which a pediatric oncology nurse overhears a distraught mother state to her child, “I’m tired of fighting with you about brushing your teeth, it’s not worth it.” Eldredge explains that while childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia has about a 95 percent survival rate, the majority of those who don’t survive succumb to central bloodline infections, which are usually caused by oral bacteria. “The idea that we can motivate families
6 · University of Michigan School of Social Work
to get involved with their child’s healthcare with something as simple as brushing their teeth—which can really affect their survival rate—was the driving point for us,” she says. As part of the project, Eldredge’s team put social work, nursing and dental hygiene students together in interprofessional teams for simulation experiences. “We all need to toot our horns to promote and demonstrate the value of social workers, and motivate our students to access that professional strength and use that voice,” she says. “We also need the other professionals to fight for us and for these teams. One hallmark for me was seeing other medical professionals ask: ‘Will I have access to social work?’” Clinical Assistant Professor Daicia Price is a current fellow. “When you get to connect with other professionals and other disciplines as a fellow, it changes the dynamics because there is no hierarchy.” Price’s team is working on a webbased learning module for people with chronic health conditions.
“We are trying to figure out how all of our professions—at the prevention, assessment and intervention levels— support people who are at risk for or living with a chronic health condition,” she explains. “When you start talking about people who are in communities that have a limited amount of health professionals— that are marginalized in other ways by race, economics, gender—it is critical that the healthcare teams are prepared to deliver optimal service to those individuals. My team is working to transform the system of care in these underserved communities.”
School of Social Work Interprofessional Leadership Fellows since 2016 Joshua Brewster Leslie Dubin Mary Eldredge Daniel Fischer Shanna Kattari Erin Khang Debra Mattison Daicia Price Anao Zhang