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.