Conference report

The 21st Annual Interdisciplinary Health Care Team Conference took place in Louisville, Kentucky, 23± 26 September, 1999. On the banks of the beautiful Ohio River with clear skies and mild temperatures, academics and practitioners passionately discussed the rewards and challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration in education and practice. Unique among meetings, this annual conference provides educators the opportunity to present and discuss interdisciplinary training and practice solely among others engaged in similar activities. While this conference remains fairly small and intimate (approximately 200 people participated this year), interdisciplinary training is gaining increasing prominence in the US. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), part of the US Department of Health and Human Services, has just established a new Division of Interdisciplinary and CommunityBased Programs in the Bureau of Health Profession (BHPr). Under the leadership of Bernice A. Parlak, the new Division brings together many of the programs funding interdisciplinary training for health care professionals including the Geriatrics Training programs, Rural interdisciplinary Training, and the Area Health Education Centers. Many BHPr grantees were among the presenters at the conference, which included two full days of presentations addressing the numerous successes, challenges, lessons learned and nitty-gritty work of training students and already practicing professionals to work in interdisciplinary health care teams. Several presentations were devoted to interdisciplinary training and care of older persons. The training programs use a variety of methods and sites for education including home-based geriatric assessment, clinic-based assessment, evaluation of nursing home practices, rural health care settings, participation in public health prevention efforts and the use of videos and CD-ROMS in training. Participants in the John E. Hartford Foundation’s Geriatric Interdisciplinary Team Training (GITT) program also discussed work in progress. These programs involve training of teams consisting of a minimum of a physician, nurse and social worker to serve the elderly. The 12 GITT sites around the US have approached team training in different ways and are working with different clinical sites. One group, the UCLA/Kaiser Permanente team, is working to rationalise care of the elderly in managed care settings. They are conducting t̀rain the trainer’ sessions so that their teaching will have a snowball effect throughout the local Kaiser system. They are enticing even the most reticent of practitioners to be teachers and to do their teaching in relatively brief segments, an accommodation to the requirements of a busy managed care setting. Presenters gave a t̀rue-to-life’ and amusing demonstration of rationalising telephone communications between professionals so that non-case relevant information is kept to a minimum and all the essentials of the case are included. Both the UCLA and the Baylor (Texas) GITT sites are using videotapes to aid in education. Several other presenters focused on interdisciplinary training for rural health care delivery. Trainers in one rural residency program in a school of health professions described how collaboration among the residents and the wide range of health professionals trained in the school has resulted in mutual referrals for health care services, teaching of residents by professional school staff and residency faculty teaching health professions students. Another