title: Professional equipoise: Getting beyond dominant discourses in an interprofessional team.
abstract: In 2011, the US Department of Veterans Affairs established five Centers of Excellence to study training in the patient-centered medical home clinical microsystem. Early on, our center began a discourse analysis in order to better understand each profession's assumptions about roles, responsibilities, and the basis for "truth" in clinical care. We discovered that these different discourses were pervasive and led to unhelpful stereotypes of each other. This article describes the evidence we identified that led us to hypothesize these conflicting discourses and stereotypes. Specifically, we report on our attempts to identify the traditional discourses of four post-graduate professions--medicine, nurse practitioner, psychology, and pharmacy. We also share lessons from our efforts to defuse participants from their identified discursive assumptions, and develop appreciation and value for the discursive contributions of other professions--a process we call professional equipoise. We conclude that we can change these discourses and the professional identity formation of novices if we provide sustained, integrated interprofessional education curriculum. This implies that we need: embedded, longitudinal training; faculty role modeling of inquisitiveness, respectful relationships, and risk taking; and safe and honest discussion about our differences.
authors.affiliation: a Boise VA Medical Center , Boise , ID , USA .
authors.forename: C Scott
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.affiliation: b Family Medicine Residency of Idaho , Boise , ID , USA .
authors.forename: Winslow G
authors.initials: WG
authors.lastname: Gerrish
authors.affiliation: a Boise VA Medical Center , Boise , ID , USA .
authors.forename: Melanie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nash
authors.affiliation: a Boise VA Medical Center , Boise , ID , USA .
authors.forename: Amber
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fisher
authors.affiliation: a Boise VA Medical Center , Boise , ID , USA .
authors.forename: Adam
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Brotman
authors.affiliation: c Department of Nursing , Gonzaga University , Spokane , WA , USA .
authors.forename: Deborah
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.affiliation: d San Francisco VA Medical Center , San Francisco , CA , USA , and.
authors.forename: Ami
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Student
authors.affiliation: e Salt Lake City VA , Salt Lake City , UT , USA.
authors.forename: Melissa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Green
authors.affiliation: a Boise VA Medical Center , Boise , ID , USA .
authors.forename: Jodie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Donovan
authors.affiliation: a Boise VA Medical Center , Boise , ID , USA .
authors.forename: Melissa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dreffin
mesh_terms: D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D003657:Decision Making; D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D006801:Humans; D033183:Interdisciplinary Communication; D010348:Patient Care Team; D014481:United States
keywords: Education; interprofessional education; interprofessional relations; interprofessional research; qualitative method