Students from NYU Silver Will Join NYU Nursing School in Medication Management Demonstration

The NYU Silver School of Social Work is pleased to be a partner with the NYU College of Nursing in a project to enhance interprofessional education, leadership, and team-building skills for practitioners and students to help address the complexity of medication management for frail older adults in the community.

The project is intended to demonstrate an innovative interprofessional model of collaborative, coordinated care ("3Cs model") that reflects the right communication across the health care system. One goal will be to develop implementation guidelines for an interprofessional practice/education model, and disseminate them to at least 20 organizations across the nation. The guidelines will place a special emphasis on model adaptability across health care settings.

Participating professionals and students will be drawn from NYUCN’s Adult NP Program, NYU Silver's MSW program, the Touro College of Pharmacy Doctor of Pharmacy program, and the Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY). A total of 200 students (50 NP, 50 MSW, and 100 PharmD), in 100 teams, will come together in a large community-based health care plan managed by VNSNY.

Student teams will be supervised and mentored by 10 NPs, 10 LCSWs, and one Pharmacist, who will guide the students in the use of the 3Cs model by emphasizing communication, coordination, and collaboration among the team members to provide patient/family-centered care to older adults with complex multiple chronic conditions. Due to its focus on dual-eligible frail older adults, this project meets the funding preferences for substantially benefiting a practice population categorized as poor and/or medically underserved.

The goal of the interprofessional teamwork is to improve the management of complex medication regimens in these community-dwelling frail older adults. The aim of the model is to improve patient/family quality of care, quality of life, and health outcomes by mobilizing the resources of professsionals from different disciplines who bring their varied expertise together and meld their combined knowledge to provide the best in patient/family-centered care.