17: INTERDISCIPLINARY AND INTERPROFESSIONAL COLLABORATION ■ 403program development combined with grounding in change and leadership theory,
and concepts of program planning, implementation, and evaluation. It can take up
to 17 years before the scientific findings become part of practice at the bedside or
in the community setting (Charman, 2013; Morris, Wooding, & Grant, 2011). The
DNP program emphasis on interdisciplinary, relevant, evidence- based projects is
designed to significantly reduce that lag time. DNP graduates have the ability to
translate bench research and apply improvement science across a wide range of
health care settings.
This work is actualized in the DNP scholarly project. One exemplar is the com-
munity assessment, development of, and sustainability factors necessary for creation
of nurse- managed clinics as a system of care. These “health homes” led by the pedi-
atric nurse practitioner and family nurse practitioner/ DNP students and faculty in
our UT Nursing Clinical Enterprise promote enhanced collaboration with academic
partners including community pediatrics, behavioral health, dentistry, and audiology;
a new model of health care for 6,700 children enrolled in Head Start programs and
the care of 14,000 patients across all UT Nursing Clinical Enterprise (UTNCE) clinics.
The DNP plays an important role in the evaluation of new, sustainable- care deliv-
ery models including clinic design, development, implementation, and evaluation and
identification of strategies that lead to positive outcomes, a healthy operating margin,
and long- term sustainability. The DNP integrates principles of QI, psychosocial, and
cultural concepts and utilizes models and theoretical concepts to explain the observed
phenomena. The DNP utilizes principles of EBP and health care economics to eval-
uate these models. An understanding of health economics and finance, including a
cost analysis as a standard component of the final practice inquiry project, is critical.
Practice inquiry exemplars might include an analysis of medicare and medicaid access
and recommendations for system improvement and a gap analysis of county- level
health departments for a national accreditation. These access and public health system
improvements require effective interdisciplinary communication and collaboration.
The AACN (2006) criteria for the scholarly project describe a reflection of the
breadth of education and synthesis of knowledge gained in the course of study. The
projects demonstrate evidence of scholarship in other disciplines such as behavioral
science, business, engineering, and pharmacology. The scholarly project is enriched
through an interprofessional curriculum and interdisciplinary final project commit-
tees, ultimately resulting in collaborative peer- reviewed presentations, manuscript
submissions, and other professional and lay publications. At this critical juncture,
DNP projects must be relevant to patient populations and meaningful, sustainable
systems of care. The DNP projects and development of new ways to deliver effective
IPE have the potential to be transformative in nursing practice not only from health
care system perspectives, but also in terms of the transformation of nurses themselves.
■ SUMMARY
DNP students and graduates face many exciting challenges in health care reform and
in designing effective systems of health care delivery. These include being responsive to
emerging needs and health issues for individual patients, their families, and local to global
populations. Recognizing that traditional, hierarchical, models of the 20th century do not
work, new interprofessional practice models must adhere to the triple aim principles of
“reengineered” primary health care across diverse settings in the context of a reengineered
health care system and attitude of health care professionals. Social justice, wellness, mutual
respect, and value- based health care must replace insular silos of hierarchy, insecurity,