Vani Patterson, MPH
Administrative Director
University of Michigan
Michigan Center for Interprofessional Education
Vani Patterson serves as the Administrative Director for the University of Michigan Center for Interprofessional Education. Her early career spanned politics in Washington, D.C. to community nutrition in Detroit. When she returned to the U-M in 2013, she joined the Adolescent Health Initiative to consult health care teams across the country to improve patient-centered care for adolescents. In witnessing the profound impact of collaborative care in the practice setting, Ms. Patterson was drawn to the work of the Center for IPE. Her current interests are in transforming the education of pre-health professionals to enable the future of collaborative care.

Presenting at the Nexus Summit:

Poster Description: Background: Interprofessional teamwork within healthcare delivery has been shown to improve patient satisfaction, decrease provider burnout, and lead to improved healthcare outcomes. The patient is a critical part of this team, and their perspective has become an increased focus in health care decision making. At our institution, we found that there was no correlation between staff perception of team functioning and patient perception of team functioning or overall patient experience. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to evaluate patients' awareness of team-based…
Seminar Description: The seminar will provide a platform to share how interprofessional leaders are supporting some of the priority areas of the National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being. The National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being (National Academy of Medicine, 2022) describes “changes needed across the health system and at the organizational level to improve the well-being of the health workforce.” The National Plan includes seven priority areas and advocates that health worker well-being requires support from multiple units, including academic institutions or training programs.…
Centers for IPE have had success in co-developing IPE curricula with student leaders, leading to more meaningful and relevant IPE for health professional students. IPE leaders have also bemoaned the “hidden curriculum” of experiential settings, often undoing the IPE advancements made in the didactic setting. While there is a new opportunity for IPE faculty and centers to transform interprofessional practice and experiential education, we have not discussed how to leverage our students as partners and co-developers in leading this change. We invite students, practitioners, educators and IPE…