That our health care system could do better is hardly a controversial idea. The authors of this book cite several reports, including the Institute of Medicine's To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System [ 1 ], to explain the need for a different approach to health care in the twenty-first century. Our modern health care system, while wonderfully effective, is also dangerous, each year harming thousands of the people it is trying to help. The complexity of health care poses a formidable challenge to change, yet change is sorely needed to make the system safer, more efficient, and more cost effective.

The solution, this book proposes, is to create a truly integrated system in which all of the various health professions collaborate. The system must be patient centered. The health care team must function as a team and not just a collection of professionals pursuing their particular goals. Most important, the key to changing health care practice is to change health care education. Traditional curricula in medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and other health professions tend to perpetuate barriers to collaboration among practitioners.