HSL to House New Interprofessional Education office
Meg Zomorodi, clinical associate professor in the School of Nursing, will lead Carolina’s new Office for Interprofessional Education and Practice, housed in the Health Sciences Library.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill recently announced it has established a new Office of Interprofessional Education & Practice (IPEP). The office will be housed at the Health Sciences Library (HSL), and led by Meg Zomorodi, PhD, RN, Assistant Provost of IPE. The office will oversee the creation, implementation and dissemination of interprofessional education, research and clinical experiences designed to enhance collaborative learning. It will also develop and implement an evaluation system for interprofessional learning that demonstrates the impact of IPE on practice patterns.
Nandita Mani, PhD, M.L.I.S., Director of HSL says, “Having the library be a key partner in this Office’s establishment at Carolina is a great privilege and honor. With support from the Provost, we will be able to help this initiative by having our librarians involved in three core IPE related areas, namely: clinical, instruction & scholarship, and health literacy & communication.
IPE is critical to how health care systems and teams function today, and the HSL is proud to be at the vibrant center of collaboration, joint projects, innovation, and interdisciplinary networking. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Interprofessional education occurs when students from two or more professions learn about, from, and with each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes. Once students understand how to work interprofessionally, they are ready to enter the workplace as a member of the collaborative practice team. This is a key step in moving health systems from fragmentation to a position of strength.
HSL Leadership, past and present, together chose to invite the IPEP program into HSL space as the perfect central, neutral, intersecting location that is open to and helps all. In addition, the expertise of the HSL staff, complements the expertise of the students and faculty in both programs, and the library is realizing the benefits of these close partnerships in areas such as digital health research, impact measurement & visualization, and search services.
