DU awarded Macy Foundation grant | The Triangle

DU awarded Macy Foundation grant

Photo courtesy of DarkoStojanovic, pixabay

Drexel University has been awarded a grant from the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation to enhance professionalism in the health care field.

Professionalism in health care includes topics like ethics, interpersonal skills necessary for working with patients, technical skills and others needed for good medical practice.

Twelve other universities, including Alabama College of Osteopathic Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Commonwealth Medical College, Duquesne University, Indiana University, Jefferson College, Ohio State University, Southeastern Louisiana University, Stony Brook, University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley and Western Michigan University School of Medicine, will be collaborating with Drexel to improve professionalism in health care education.

The grant will be used to advance the existing website, ProfessionalismFormation.org (PFO), which will be put to use at over 30 health care education schools in the United States.

“This generous grant will enable us to address the challenge of generating new educational resources for the entire health care education community.” We will also publish educational research that contributes to a growing national understanding of the components of effective teaching and learning of professionalism and interprofessional care,” Dennis Novack told DrexelNow.

Novak is the associate dean of medical education at the Drexel University College of Medicine. He was previously awarded a grant to create PFO.

The website had 13 interactive modules which help teach health care providers about different aspects of professionalism including empathy, compassion, honesty, ethics and social justice.

The Macy Foundation was formed in 1930 to improve health care in the United States by Kate Macy Ladd in honor of her father and philanthropist, Josiah Macy Jr.. According to the foundation’s website, it aims to “support projects that broaden and improve health professional education.”

Along with the grant from the Macy Foundation, Kymberlee Montgomery, chair of the Department of Advanced Practice Nursing in the College of Nursing and Health Professions, is also contributing to make PFO a more comprehensive source.

“Leaders in health professions education have worried about the professional image of health care clinicians, and the public’s declining trust in health professionals. Managed care has grown, clinical care has become more fragmented, and there has been adverse publicity about error in care,” Montgomery told DrexelNow. “A new paradigm for care demands commitments to professional values, and skills in working in teams. We are partnering with these institutions to enhance and expand their education in professionalism and interprofessional care. To practice together, it is essential to learn together.”

PFO aims to provide the tools necessary to improve professionalism in the health care a field. Their online modules have text, videos and exercises to which students can respond with text or videos and start meaningful discussions among peers.

The website also has assessment tools, such as tools to measure empathy, compassion, reflective ability, emotional intelligence, well-being, burnout, work-life balance and tolerance of ambiguity. These are all factors that go into medical professionalism.

This grant will aid in enhancing PFO with the goal of educating about health care professionalism.