The modern healthcare team is truly interdisciplinary. Nurses, pharmacists, PAs, physicians, medical imaging professionals, dental hygienists, and health psychologists, among many other professionals, are called upon to combine their skills and expertise to best serve patients.
And that’s the way it should be.
As experienced healthcare professionals, we know that the very best way to serve patients and innovate the state of healthcare is through collaborative practice. That’s why we’ve made interprofessional collaboration a way of life at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS), where we bring together professionals, educators, and students across more than 100 programs into one ardent community of lifelong learners.
We are committed to empowering the students and faculty of our three campuses (Boston, Worcester, and Manchester) and online community to participate in and lead interprofessional collaborative experiences. In labs, classrooms, and simulations, faculty and students alike take on endeavors that expand their own knowledge and contribute to the healthcare field as a whole.
At MCPHS, we are passionate about what we can accomplish – together.
An interdisciplinary learning environment
Dive into a supportive and engaged community totally dedicated to the health sciences and healthcare. Here, you will find an environment designed to encourage students and faculty alike to share their knowledge and learn new insights from their peers.
Optometry educators provide PA students with real knowledge they will apply in their future careers. PA students collaborate with nursing students to give back to the local community. Acupuncture students share insight into their growing field with pharmacy students. All of this is possible because of the unique network of current and future healthcare leaders who comprise our learning environment.
On-site patient care, improved through interprofessional collaboration
Discover the difference that a focus on interprofessional collaboration makes. Through on-site patient clinics, treatment centers, and outreach programs, MCPHS serves more than 30,000 people in New England. One of the ways we accomplish this is by weaving our emphasis on collaboration into the way we care for our patients. For example, dental hygienists at the Forsyth School of Dental Hygiene are trained to look beyond the mouth and implement best practices used by nurses and PAs in order to identify broader health issues.
Partnerships that set the tone for the future of healthcare
Get a glimpse of the future of healthcare. We are focused on meeting the demands of today’s integrative healthcare field by training the next generation of healthcare professionals in collaborative practice.
At MCPHS, we strategically identify ways to innovate the state of healthcare education and set the tone for the future of the field. The Center for Integration of Primary Care and Oral Health, a collaboration between MCPHS and Harvard University Schools of Medicine and Dental Medicine, serves as a national resource for systems-level research on oral health integration into the primary care setting. The initiative is just one of the ways we’re bringing our expertise to the table and supporting the future of collaborative practice.
Scholarship with a focus on collaboration
From publications to research, MCPHS faculty members are involved in more than 1,400 scholarly engagements each year. We are shaping the conversation about the future of healthcare, and we’re doing so with a focus on collaborative scholarship. Recent scholarship includes a new anthology edited by a professor from the School of Arts and Sciences that discusses the importance of bridging the disciplines when serving patients with psychosomatic illness.
Our four pillars of collaborative practice (interdisciplinary learning, patient care, partnerships, and scholarship), underscore our commitment to collaborating to educate, and educating to collaborate.