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Focusing on quality enhancement: The C3 initiative The MUSC Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP), Creating Collaborative Care (C3) emphasizes interpro-fessional education.   The QEP is a major requirement of the university's SACS (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools) reaffirmation of accreditation process. It is a broad-based, universitywide 10-year course of action for enhancing the quality of education. The plan is integral to MUSC's mission and focuses on improving and assessing student learning outcomes.   As part of the SACS reaffirmation process, the SACS On-Site Review Team will be on campus March 27 - 28 and will review the proposed QEP.   As recommended by several Institute of Medicine (IOM) reports, future health care professionals should constitute effective interprofessional teams to improve health care delivery. The C3 initiative serves as an institutional response to these recommendations. C3 offers a continuum from knowledge acquisition to teambuilding experiences for student learning. This continuum is motivated by four interdependent goals: Goal 1: Students will acquire a set of defined teamwork competencies—knowledge, values, attitudes, personal and interprofessional skills, principles, beliefs and standards Goal 2: Students will acquire knowledge, including the values and beliefs, of health professions different from their own discipline that will enable them to define interprofessional health care delivery or research Goal 3: Students will apply their teamwork competencies in a collaborative interprofessional health care delivery or research learning setting Goal 4: Students will demonstrate their teamwork competencies in a collaborative interprofessional health care delivery or translational research contexts. These goals will be achieved through the work of four primary domains: curricular; extracurricular; teaching scholars academy; and clinical effectiveness and patient safety whose leaders will be respectively: Maralynne Mitcham, Ph.D.; Willette Burnham, M.Ed.; Mary Mauldin, Ed.D., and Frances Lee, DBA. A C3 council will provide assistance with reviewing progress, resolving major barriers and addressing major changes for improvements. An assessment team will assess progress of C3 regarding QEP standards in achieving stated objectives.   Amy Blue, Ph.D., will provide leadership for C3  in the newly established role of assistant provost for education within the Office of Academic Affairs.   C3 will establish the framework for redesigning MUSC's formal and informal educational programs whereby future graduates will not only continue to excel in the academic challenges of their own chosen profession, but additionally excel in today's complex interprofessional health care system. SACS QEP committee Amy Blue, Ph.D., chair; Richard Albenesius, DMD; Laura Cousineau; Michael Drake, COM III student; Brianne Dunn, COP III student; Susie Edwards; David Garr, M.D.; Philip Hall, Pharm.D.; Thomas Higerd, Ph.D.; Tara Hulsey, Ph.D.; Tariq Javed, DMD; Carol Lancaster, Ph.D.; Frances Wickham Lee, DBA; Mary Mauldin, Ed.D.; Jacqueline McGinty, Ph.D.; Maralynne Mitcham, Ph.D.; Richard Webb, COM IV student; Valerie West, Ed.D.; and Jeffrey Wong, M.D.     Friday, March 23, 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.