title: Military Interprofessional Health Care Teams: How USU is Working to Harness the Power of Collaboration.
abstract: Despite efforts to increase patient safety, hundreds of thousands of lives are lost each year to preventable health care errors. The Institute of Medicine and other organizations have recommended that facilitating effective interprofessional health care team work can help address this problem. While the concept of interprofessional health care teams is known, understanding and organizing effective team performance have proven to be elusive goals. Although considerable research has been conducted in the civilian sector, scholars have yet to extend research to the military context. Indeed, delivering the highest caliber of health care to our service men and women is vitally important. This commentary describes a new initiative as the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences aimed at researching the characteristics of successful military interprofessional teams and why those characteristics are important. It also describes the interprofessional education initiative that Uniformed Services University is launching to help optimize U.S. military health care.
authors.affiliation: Daniel K. Inouye Graduate School of Nursing, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, 4301 Jones Bridge Road, E1056, Bethesda, MD 20814.
authors.forename: Matthew R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: D'Angelo
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine, Daniel K. Inouye Graduate School of Nursing, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, 4301 Jones Bridge Road, Bethesda, MD 20814.
authors.forename: Adam K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Saperstein
authors.affiliation: Daniel K. Inouye Graduate School of Nursing, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, 4301 Jones Bridge Road, E1056, Bethesda, MD 20814.
authors.forename: Diane C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Seibert
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, 4301 Jones Bridge Road, Bethesda, MD 20814.
authors.forename: Steven J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Durning
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, 4301 Jones Bridge Road, Bethesda, MD 20814.
authors.forename: Lara
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Varpio
mesh_terms: D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D006801:Humans; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D008887:Military Medicine / Q000193:education* / Q000379:methods; D008889:Military Personnel; D010348:Patient Care Team / Q000592:standards* / Q000639:trends; D016730:Program Development