Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) competencies
What are the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) competencies?
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has defined five core competencies that healthcare professionals should possess to provide high-quality patient care. These competencies were published in 2003 in the report titled “Health Professions Education: A Bridge to Quality.” The five core competencies identified by the IOM are:
- Patient-Centered Care: The ability to provide care that is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values, and to ensure that patient values guide all clinical decisions.
- Interdisciplinary Teamwork: The ability to function effectively as a member or leader of interprofessional healthcare teams, promoting open communication, mutual respect, and shared decision-making to achieve patient-centered goals.
- Evidence-Based Practice: The ability to integrate the best available evidence with clinical expertise and patient values to make informed decisions about patient care.
- Quality Improvement: The ability to use data and quality improvement methods to identify and improve the systems and processes that underlie healthcare delivery, ensuring that care is safe, effective, efficient, patient-centered, timely, and equitable.
- Informatics: The ability to use information and technology to communicate, manage knowledge, mitigate error, and support clinical decision-making at the point of care.
These Institute of Medicine (IOM) competencies are important for all healthcare professionals to possess, regardless of their specific discipline, and they serve as a framework for educational programs to ensure that graduates are prepared to provide high-quality patient care.