One of the reasons that piano trios are ubiquitous is that the structure of the trio mirrors the structure of music itself. Piano trios can stand alone, or can serve as the backbone (called a “rhythm section”) for larger groupings of instruments. The jazz piano trio is one of the most fundamental and popular group formats, and consists of a piano, a bass, and drums. In this essay, we examine two of the era’s leading jazz groups as models of pre- and post-transformation practice, and identify lessons learned for today’s healthcare environment. It turns out that the field of jazz music underwent a similar interprofessional transformation in the early 1960s. While both areas are important, we posit that additional issues lie at the heart of interprofessional practice, and will require significant cultural transformation before the ideal can be achieved. Efforts to foster more rapid adoption have focused mainly on structurally-based barriers to interprofessional practice or educational deficiencies of practitioners.
While these are laudable goals and have been demonstrated to foster a variety of positive outcomes,, ,, ] healthcare practice on the ground has been slow to evolve toward an interprofessional ideal. At its best, interprofessional practice entails seamless communication across disciplinary boundaries, broad participation in and shared responsibility for healthcare decision-making among multiple professions, and high quality team-based practice. There has been concurrent interest in interprofessional education, with articulation of core competencies by several international groups. Over the last two decades, interprofessional collaborative practice has been increasingly embraced as an ideal model for the delivery of safe, high quality, and patient-centered healthcare.