Tomorrow's best physicians will be those who continually learn, adjust, and innovate as new information and best practices evolve, reflecting adaptive expertise in response to practice challenges. As the first volume in the American Medical Association's MedEd Innovation Series, The Master Adaptive Learner is an instructor-focused guide covering models for how to train and teach future clinicians who need to develop these adaptive skills and utilize them throughout their careers. - Explains and clarifies the concept of a Master Adaptive Learner: a metacognitive approach to learning based on self-regulation that fosters the success and use of adaptive expertise in practice. - Contains both theoretical and practical material for instructors and administrators, including guidance on how to implement a Master Adaptive Learner approach in today's institutions. - Gives instructors the tools needed to empower students to become efficient and successful adaptive learners. - Helps medical faculty and instructors address gaps in physician training and prepare new doctors to practice effectively in 21st century healthcare systems. - One of the American Medical Association Change MedEd initiatives and innovations, written and edited by members of the ACE (Accelerating Change in Medical Education) Consortium – a unique, innovative collaborative that allows for the sharing and dissemination of groundbreaking ideas and projects.

Today in the United States, the professional health workforce is not consistently prepared to provide high quality health care and assure patient safety, even as the nation spends more per capita on health care than any other country. The absence of a comprehensive and well-integrated system of continuing education (CE) in the health professions is an important contributing factor to knowledge and performance deficiencies at the individual and system levels. To be most effective, health professionals at every stage of their careers must continue learning about advances in research and treatment in their fields (and related fields) in order to obtain and maintain up-to-date knowledge and skills in caring for their patients. Many health professionals regularly undertake a variety of efforts to stay up to date, but on a larger scale, the nation's approach to CE for health professionals fails to support the professions in their efforts to achieve and maintain proficiency. Redesigning Continuing Education in the Health Professions illustrates a vision for a better system through a comprehensive approach of continuing professional development, and posits a framework upon which to develop a new, more effective system. The book also offers principles to guide the creation of a national continuing education institute.

In Medicine: Preserving the Passion, Phil R. Manning, a pioneer and recognized authority in continuing medical education, and Lois DeBakey, a passionate advocate of critical reasoning and leading scholar in scientific communication, endeavor to shift the focus in lifelong learning from group exercises in a lecture hall to self-directed, practice-related activities. Al though most experts have applauded this new concept, few publications have addressed methods for implementation. The Manning-DeBakey book describes such methods as devised by outstanding clinicians and acade micians to obtain educational benefit from their clinical experience. Some techniques inspired by quality assurance, for example, these master cli nicians have used successfully to improve their knowledge, skills, and patient care. This book not only identifies the primary concerns in con tinuing medical education, but also offers sound recommendations and effective solutions and suggests future directions and approaches. The authors have analyzed the continuing educational practices of phy sicians in a wide range of environments, from small communities to the most acclaimed medical centers, and have extracted additional advice from the writings of past authorities like Osler. The resulting concepts will un doubtedly attract wide public attention. Office practice audit, self-directed learning, case indexing, patient education, computer-assisted education, and collegial networks, as well as regular reading, writing, and teaching, are among the successful methods described by physicians and surgeons who exemplify the highest standards of medical practice.

The Future of Nursing explores how nurses' roles, responsibilities, and education should change significantly to meet the increased demand for care that will be created by health care reform and to advance improvements in America's increasingly complex health system. At more than 3 million in number, nurses make up the single largest segment of the health care work force. They also spend the greatest amount of time in delivering patient care as a profession. Nurses therefore have valuable insights and unique abilities to contribute as partners with other health care professionals in improving the quality and safety of care as envisioned in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) enacted this year. Nurses should be fully engaged with other health professionals and assume leadership roles in redesigning care in the United States. To ensure its members are well-prepared, the profession should institute residency training for nurses, increase the percentage of nurses who attain a bachelor's degree to 80 percent by 2020, and double the number who pursue doctorates. Furthermore, regulatory and institutional obstacles-including limits on nurses' scope of practice-should be removed so that the health system can reap the full benefit of nurses' training, skills, and knowledge in patient care. In this book, the Institute of Medicine makes recommendations for an action-oriented blueprint for the future of nursing.