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Students to gain skills from C3 project  by Cindy Abole Public Relations MUSC's efforts to prepare health professions students by developing student learning experiences and team building is the continuing goal of MUSC's Creating Collaborative Care, or C3 plan.   The C3 initiative is an extension of MUSC's Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) and a major requirement of the university's Southern Association of Colleges and Schools reaffirmation of accreditation process. C3 offers the campus a 10-year, broad-based course of action to enhance the quality of interprofessional education on campus. MUSC's C3 and QEP focus is developing interprofessional education.   Already a campuswide C3 implementation committee, composed of both faculty and students, was been busy assessing interprofessional education activities, discussing plans, developing an academic program structure and setting first-year goals. The team is committed to redeveloping and designing both formal and informal interprofessional education programs.   Additionally, a C3 Student Advisory group is being formed among students from each of the six colleges to share ideas and discuss strategies associated with interprofessional education. Each of the four C3 domain committees have been actively meeting, communicating and setting goals.   The C3 domains leaders and missions are: Curricular (Maralynne Mitchum, Ph.D., College of Health Professions) — Group charged with assessing interprofessional education activities on campus Extracurricular (Willette Burnham, Student Programs, and Valerie West, Ed.D., associate provost for Education and Student Life)—Goal is to build upon current interprofessional programs (i.e. SCRIPT, Interprofessional Education Day, Presidential Scholars, CLARION Interpofessional Team Competition, etc.) Faculty Development (Mary Mauldin, Ed.D., Academic Research & Computing)—Focus on helping faculty acquire skills necessary to teach in the interprofessional approach, plus faculty involvement Clinical Effectiveness and Patient Safety (Donna Kern, M.D., Department of Family Medicine and Fran Lee, Clinical Effectiveness & Patient Safety Center, College of Medicine)—Assessing campuswide resources (Center for Clinical Evaluation & Teaching, CHP Simulation Lab and CON Simulation Center) to promote health care simulation. Currently, the C3 Extracurricular domain team, led by Burnham and West, is currently evaluating ways to teach students and student organizations basic team skills, cross-discipline learning and use of service learning components featuring other interprofessional experiences such as the MUSC Gives Back program and CARES Clinic.   “We want to provide the right amount of instruction to help students learn to become more effective as a team,” said West, who has led the campus' Interprofessional Education Day since 2006 and coordinates the Presidential Scholars Initiative.   Recently, members of an MUSC interprofessional faculty team developing a pilot interprofessional education project for clinical students attended the Association of Prevention Teaching and Research's Institute for Interprofessional Prevention Education held in Washington, D.C., Sept. 6-7. MUSC was among 14 institutions invited to participate in this health education conference to discuss pilot projects. The project's goal is to teach interprofessionalism and how to evaluate it.   Team members are Mary Hewett, College of Health Professions, Physician Assistant Program; Donna Kern, College of Medicine; Marilyn King, College of Nursing; Sarah Shrader, College of Pharmacy; and Andrea White, College of Health Professions, Health Administration program.   The project will involve students in medicine, pharmacy, nursing, health professions (physician assistant and health administration programs) to collaborate together during a rotation to create a service learning project within their own community.   It's exciting that this training is emphasized nationally in today's health care education,” said Kern. “Through this opportunity, we are able to collaborate with other schools and share ideas. It's really exciting to know that MUSC is involved in this type of cutting-edge program and far ahead of other institutions in this level of work.”   An important part of the C3 initiative is assessing the project outcomes. Organizers have conducted a base-line review through surveys of student attitudes and opinions relating to interprofessional education. They also hope to survey MUSC alumni and other health care professionals relating to collaborative skills and health care team experiences,   Coming up, members of the C3 team will participate in the Interprofessional Health Education Conference hosted at the University of Minnesota's Academic Health Center and the Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaborative to evaluate best practices, evidence, outcomes and lessons learned from American and Canadian health professionals, educators and students.   “This is a wonderful opportunity for our graduates to leave MUSC with an understanding of what it means to be outstanding interprofessional team members,” said Amy Blue, Ph.D., director of C3. “We'd like for MUSC to gain a national reputation for having graduates well trained in their own disciplines as well as being outstanding interprofessional team members. This is an opportunity for MUSC to be known as a leading institution in this area of health care education and training.”     Friday, Oct. 26, 2007 Catalyst Online is published weekly, updated as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Island Publications at 849-1778, ext. 201.