Following more than a decade of work advancing continuing education opportunities, two KU Medical Center offices earned accreditation as providers of interprofessional continuing education.

The Office of Continuing Education and Professional Development and Area Health Education Center were awarded accreditation status for four years by the Joint Accreditation for Interprofessional Continuing Education™.

Joint Accreditation serves as a combined providership that includes continuing education for medicine (Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education), nursing (American Nurses Credentialing Center) and pharmacy (Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education), facilitating the offering of interprofessional programs that provide continuing education credit for multiple disciplines both on campus and across the state for our rural Kansas community partners.

Joint Accreditation designation also strengthens and supports KU Medical Center’s interprofessional practice and education efforts to advance team-based collaborative practice through interprofessional continuing education, resulting in improved quality of care and health outcomes for people and populations throughout Kansas. Educating the current health care workforce is an effective way to sustain the medical center’s investment in preparing health professions students for interprofessional practice. Because it is a partnership of the original, national accrediting bodies, it maintains the same high standards for continuing education programming. It ensures that continuing education for health care teams serves the needs of patients and the public, and is designed to be independent, free from commercial bias, based on valid content, relevant and effective in improving the quality and safety of care delivered by the team.

“Achieving this important recognition for KU Medical Center is the culmination of our efforts for at least 15 years to enhance and increase our interprofessional programming on campus and across the state,” said Ryan Spaulding, Ph.D., vice chancellor of the Institute for Community Engagement. “We are thrilled to bring this accomplishment to KU Medical Center and our community partners.”   

Joint Accreditation establishes the standards for interprofessional continuing education and is awarded to entities that have met rigorous standards for educational quality and demonstrated compliance with the standards by the co-founding accreditors — the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) — on behalf of the collaborating accreditors.

Visit the Office for Continuing Education and Professional Development and the Area Health Education Center for more information.