Interested in Becoming a Fellow? Join a distinguished group of over 31,000 internists and leaders who already share this honor.
Sponsor a Fellow Continue the tradition of Fellowship by sharing your own experience and offering to support other members' candidacies.
Search hundreds of CME and MOC activities—free or discounted for ACP members—by topic, format, and state CME requirements to find education that matches your needs.
Browse Activities
ACP's annual internal medicine meeting will be in New Orleans, LA, from April 3-5, 2025.
INTERNAL MEDICINE MEETING
Explore our virtual course offerings and learn from anywhere.
Learn More
Treating a patient? Researching a topic? Get answers now.
Visit DynaMedex
Navigate your financial future with ACP’s tools and resources to help you plan and make wise financial decisions.
Financial Well-being
Offering guidance on clinical use cases, technology, regulations and waivers, and billing and coding.
Telehealth Resources
ACP advocates on behalf of internal medicine physicians and their patients on a number of timely issues. Learn about where ACP stands on the following areas:
If you are unable to login, please try . We apologize for the inconvenience.
This toolkit shares best practices and real-life examples of successful team-based clinical care models that include internal medicine physicians working with Nurse Practitioners (NPs) and Physician Assistants (PAs) and other members of the clinical care team. The resources below can help you foster productive and purposeful internal medicine teams.
High functioning clinical teams are essential for the delivery of high value healthcare and have been associated with:
Source: – from the National Academy of Medicine
A team-based model of care strives to meet patient needs and preferences by actively engaging patients as full participants in their care, while encouraging and supporting all health care professionals to function to the full extent of their education, certification, and licensure.
Actively engaging patients as full participants in their care, while encouraging and supporting all health care professionals to function to the full extent of their education, certification, and licensure.
Access these resources to help you define the team and understand general principals behind team-based care:
Access these resources to help build this framework and ensure clinical and administrative systems support team members in their defined work:
The term 'Advanced Practice Providers' refers to both Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners.
An improved understanding of the various roles, training requirements, and scope of work may help internists who are interested in building, expanding, or improving team-based care in their practices. The term “Advanced Practice Providers” refers to both Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners. NPs and PAs have very different requirements for both basic science education and clinical experience. In addition, their scope of practice and integration into the healthcare workforce varies significantly by state.
The resources below may help you with your decision to add an NP or PA to your team or more effectively incorporate the APP’s on your team:
Real-life examples of successful team-based care in Internal Medicine showcase ways in which team-based care involving nurse practitioners, physician assistants, pharmacists, and others are working together with patients and caregivers in both inpatient and outpatient settings.
During the hiring process, defining team members’ roles can help you empower your team. Oversight and management of a team of advance practice providers is also essential to a highly functioning team.
These job descriptions and other hiring resources can help you facilitate decisions about which patients see which team members, and the best ways to optimize outcomes while having everyone work at the top of their scope.
Hiring new staff is not always necessary to make the most of team-based care. By compensating and valuing the team you already have in place, you can decrease staff turnover and make more a more successful practice.
Patients, families, and other caregivers need a clear understanding of the roles of the interprofessional care team with explanations of which role will serve which purpose in their care. The health care team should provide information to patients, families, and other caregivers so they can make informed healthcare decisions in partnership with their care team.
The following resources can help patients understand the different roles that make up the interprofessional health care team and how they might interact with each:
Physicians, clinicians, non-clinical staff and patients may have some difficulty adapting to team-based care models. Change management principles may ease adoption by stakeholders and help sustain the team and its members over the long term. Ongoing, structured communication and feedback are essential to optimize team performance and help to sustain teams over time. Relatedness and the ability for team members to enjoy each other’s company at work should be nurtured and encouraged. High functioning teams have been associated with reduced clinician burnout and improved patient outcomes.
These resources address how team-based care can reduce burnout and how to sustain team-based care models in the long term.
To put the Steps to Optimal Team-Base Care into action, here are five easy-to-implement examples that any care team can put into place:
1. Hang pictures of team members on the wall 2. Invite patients/families to join the clinical team
Both help foster mutual trust and physical and psychological safety
3. Hang a ribbon from each staff person’s badge that states their role 4. Include team members and their roles into the new patient visit
Both help clarify roles and expectations
5. Start each clinical session with a short team huddle
Emphasizes the practice of effective communication
These ideas help to enhance team-based care by optimizing the team you already have, and working with intention to involve everyone consistently on the care team.