Interprofessional Intervention to Support Mature Women: A Case Study.

Understanding the impact interprofessional teamwork has on patient outcomes is of great interest to health care providers, educators, and administrators. This article describes one clinical team, Women's Health Specialists, and their implementation of an interprofessional health intervention course: "Mindfulness and Well-being: The Mature Woman" (MW: MW) to support mature women's health needs in midlife (age 40-70 years) and empower patient involvement in self-care. The provider team works to understand how their interprofessional education and collaborative practice (IPECP) interventions focused on supporting midlife women are associated with improved quality and clinical outcomes. This case study describes the work of the Women's Health Specialists clinic in partnership with the National Center for Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice to study the impact an interprofessional team has on the health needs of women in midlife. This article summarizes the project structure, processes, outputs, and outcomes. Data collection, analysis, strategy, and next steps for future midlife women's projects are also discussed.Keywords: midlife; women's health and integrative therapies; interprofessional education; interprofessional practice; National Center Data RepositoryThe Women's Health Specialists (WHS) clinic at the University of Minnesota is committed to changing lives through expert clinical care, education, and research. This interprofessional integrative clinic is located in a diverse urban setting. More than 1,800 patients are seen monthly by interdisciplinary providers representing nursing, obstetrics and gynecology, family medicine, internal medicine, acupuncture, nutrition, Reiki therapy, health coaching, pharmacy, and psychological services. The clinic actively participates in the education of medical students and residents, advanced practice nursing students, and pharmacy students. WHS also contributes data to the National Center for Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice as an incubator site. National Center incubators are early adopter intervention sites across the country that create, implement, and evaluate interprofessional interventions and submit standardized interprofessional data to the National Data Repository (Pechacek, Cerra, Brandt, Lutfiyya, & Delaney, 2015).Providers at WHS noticed an increase in the number of female patients entering midlife. Approximately 300 patients seen each month at the clinic are ages 40-65 years. This midlife age group is confronting multiple health issues and seeking an integrative approach to their care, including credible information on how to maintain their vitality and improve their health as they age, and interventions for coping with menopause (American Association of Retired Persons & National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2006). Providers were challenged to meet the women's health education needs within the typical clinic schedule and to adequately discuss approaches to various aspects of their health. Issues such as menopause, bone health, mental health, sexuality, sleep disturbance, and disease prevention are all topics that require time and individualized care plans. Given the paucity of research on approaches to mature women's health, a systems improvement project was undertaken to determine how to best serve this growing midlife demographic (Drake & Torkelson, 2012). In other studies, group health interventions have been shown to improve knowledge, provide greater satisfaction with care, and decrease some health risks (McNeil et al., 2013).The concept of a mindfulness and well-being course for mature women was born out of a need to provide informative group encounters on key health topics with time for discussion and reflection. A health coach skilled in facilitating discussion that bridges conventional and complementary alternative medicine was chosen to support and guide a small group learning process (Barnes, Bloom, & Nahin, 2008). …