Abstract
Transformational learning is the focus of twenty-first century global educational reforms. In India, there is a need to amalgamate the skills and knowledge of medical, nursing, and public health practitioners and to develop robust leadership competencies among them. This initiative proposed to identify interdisciplinary leadership competencies among Indian health practitioners and to develop a training program for interdisciplinary leadership skills through an Innovation Collaborative. Medical, nursing, and public health institutions partnered in this endeavor. An exhaustive literature search was undertaken to identify leadership competencies in these three professions. Published evidence was utilized in searching for the need for interdisciplinary training of health practitioners, including current scenarios in interprofessional health education and the key competencies required. The interdisciplinary leadership competencies identified were self-awareness, vision, self-regulation, motivation, decisiveness, integrity, interpersonal communication skills, strategic planning, team building, innovation, and being an effective change agent. Subsequently, a training program was developed, and three training sessions were piloted with 66 participants. Each cohort comprised a mix of participants from different disciplines. The pilot training guided the development of a training model for building interdisciplinary leadership skills and organizing interdisciplinary leadership workshops. The need for interdisciplinary leadership competencies is recognized. The long-term objective of the training model is integration into the regular medical, nursing, and public health curricula, with the aim of developing interdisciplinary leadership skills among them. Although challenging, formal incorporation of leadership skills into health professional education is possible within the interdisciplinary classroom setting using principles of transformative learning.
Highlights
Leadership skills are essential to work in a dynamic environment for a minimum acceptable level of healthcare in populations exposed to threats from communicable and non-communicable diseases, to meet the needs of an overstretched public health system and the rising costs of providing healthcare, and to resolve the numerical shortage and poor distribution of healthcare providers globally
Interprofessional education sets the stage for teamwork, and its necessity has grown in importance due to transformational educational reforms and the transforming health systems
Recent work has evaluated the impact of a case competition-driven model on development of interprofessional competencies among graduate students and provides a model for assessing interprofessional competency development adapted to non-clinical professions [7]
Summary
In India, there is a need to amalgamate the skills and knowledge of medical, nursing, and public health practitioners and to develop robust leadership competencies among them. This initiative proposed to identify interdisciplinary leadership competencies among Indian health practitioners and to develop a training program for interdisciplinary leadership skills through an Innovation Collaborative. The long-term objective of the training model is integration into the regular medical, nursing, and public health curricula, with the aim of developing interdisciplinary leadership skills among them. Formal incorporation of leadership skills into health professional education is possible within the interdisciplinary classroom setting using principles of transformative learning
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
