Defining Doctoral-Prepared Health Scientists' Identity.

Abstract

Teamwork skills across disciplines are increasingly required for delivery of quality health care. To meet this expectation, healthcare professionals, researchers, policymakers, and educators must embrace and employ the tenets associated with teamwork. In addition, health professions faculty are expected to prepare entry-level professionals for interprofessional practice and scholarship. While various strategies reported in the literature document how entry-level health science educational programs infuse and assess the impact of interprofessional education experiences, less emphasis has been placed on understanding how faculty prepare to take on this role. Traditional doctoral education has been offered as a discipline-specific, silo-based learning experience that provides an in-depth analysis into a specific content area of interest. With the expanding emphasis on interprofessional practice in health care, an interprofessional forward-thinking approach to graduate education at the doctoral level emerged, the health science doctorate. This commentary paper seeks to describe the health scientist's identity as a scholar-practitioner who supports and advances interprofessional education and practice. Doctoral-prepared health scientists act as knowledge brokers, translators, and change agents, exemplifying interprofessional research and communication skills. Faculty need to prepare students to explain complex concepts, engage in clinical reasoning, and decision-making, and employ observational and data analysis to improve health professions education and ultimately team-based care.