The University has entered a new collaboration with other schools to help educate future leaders in health care.
The National Clinician Scholars Program is a consortium between the University, the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University. The two-year program offers students a master’s degree in health care research.
The University’s Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation will house the program, which will expand its enrollees to include not only recently graduated physicians, but also nurses with doctoral degrees.
The IHPI-CSP will replace a similar program that was run through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which in 2014 planned to end its Clinical Scholars Program. The new program’s focus is creating an opportunity for doctors and nurses to explore various health care delivery methods while training alongside one another. Doctors and nurses will have the opportunity to partake in health care design, improvement and research.
Rodney Hayward, professor of internal medicine and public health, who will direct the IHPI-CSP, said the program is an incredible opportunity for future scholars.
“It’s one of the most important times — given the pressure to change health care cost and also providing high quality health care to Americans,” Hayward said.
He added that, though students will earn a degree in health care research, the program will not focus exclusively on research and scholarship, but also on health policy.
“There will be work with policy makers in the public and private sector, in order to actually change how health policy is done to actually improve it,” Hayward explained.
In a University press release, John Ayanian, IHPI’s director and professor of internal medicine, said more than 45 out of the institute’s 450 faculty members are alumni of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s old program, and he is happy to house its replacement within the institute.
“We’re delighted to make the new Clinician Scholars program a key part of IHPI, as it fits exceptionally well with our institute’s focus on evaluating how healthcare works and how it can be improved through changes in practice and policy,” he said.
Nursing Prof. Jan Larson said the inclusion of nurses in the program will allow nurses to have real world experience working alongside doctors. She added that the program will call for nurses who are hoping to become leaders within the health care sector.
“The interdisciplinary component of this program is important because the most meaningful research is typically done by teams of people from different disciplines,” Larson said. “Each discipline looks at the same issue from a different perspective and this enriches the research.”