Stronger Together!: Organizational Mentoring in the Establishment of an IPE Program at an Academic Health Center

Establishing robust interprofessional education programs requires work on institution culture, policy, logistics, and finance across a wide range of stakeholders. In 2019, Duke Health opened the Interprofessional Education and Care (IPEC) Center to promote interprofessional teamwork across campus. The IPEC Director looked to the leader of the Duke Academy for Health Professions Education and Academic Development (AHEAD), an organization founded in 2014 focused on faculty development, for “organizational mentoring” in navigating key steps in the center’s development.

In this talk, we, as the IPEC Center and Duke AHEAD leaders, will discuss our efforts to promote IPE for our community and how we became stronger together. Participants will hear about lessons learned in our collaboration including:

1. Readiness for IPE at Duke: Duke AHEAD set the stage for institutional readiness for IPE, particularly among leaders, staff, and educators and provided institution level “introductions” for the IPEC Center, including inviting the director to speak at Duke AHEAD sponsored Education Day and collaborating to offer monthly Grand Rounds.
2. Relationship development: Duke AHEAD helped the IPEC Center make connections with leaders across campus. Further, we sit on each other’s respective advisory committees and our administrative staff collaborate on coordination and communication.
3. Resource alignment: Given limited budgets, we have combined resources to offer educational grants and a certificate program for health professions educators and to co-hire an evaluator.
4. Pandemic induced resilience: Our working relationship has grown stronger during 2020 as we collaborated to identify and advocate for IPE and respond to challenges related to the pandemic and social crises.

Duke AHEAD and the IPEC Center facilitated the growth of both entities, despite the remarkable challenges of the last year. Our unique partnership at a major academic institution may serve as a best practice for other institutions wishing to establish collaborative leadership teams.