For Interprofessional Healthcare Month, we are highlighting individuals and teams across the University of Michigan community who are making a difference in Interprofessional Education (IPE) and Practice (IPP).
Erin Khang is a passionate leader in interprofessional collaboration, bringing heart, vision, and deep respect to every team she joins. From ICU to pediatric dialysis, she’s championed creative, team-based solutions that center patients and families. As a founding leader of the Healthcare Equity Consult Service, she helped turn a bold idea into a transformative program improving equity, communication, and care across the health system. Her work is a powerful example of what’s possible when expertise meets empathy on an interprofessional team.
What does interprofessional teamwork mean to you?
At its best, it's multiple disciplines working collaboratively in a respectful, purpose-driven manner. I see respect on an interprofessional team not as mere politeness or the absence of negative interactions, but as the ability to show a deep appreciation for, and when needed, deference to, another colleague's expertise and perspective.
What is a powerful example of interprofessional teamwork you’ve encountered or been a part of?
I am fortunate to have so many examples having worked in hospice, ICU settings, and ambulatory care clinics. I will highlight a memorable experience I had working in pediatric dialysis. As many know, diet and fluid adherence in pediatric dialysis is a challenge for kids and their families, in addition to all their complex medical and psychosocial needs. Our unit leveraged expertise from social workers, dieticians, nurses, physicians, nurse practitioners, art therapists, music therapists, and our dialysis tech to create an incentive program. Whether it was a baseball theme or the Olympics, patients could work towards the goal of better fluid and diet adherence as well as prizes and recognition. Reflecting on this memory leaves me grateful for the opportunity to have worked with some of the most caring, humble, and dedicated healthcare colleagues.
Could you share some information about the Healthcare Equity Consult Service (HECS), your role in that service, and its impact?
It was a privilege to be one of the interprofessional leaders to contribute towards the creation of what is now the Healthcare Equity Consult Service (HECS). The concept was created and supported by health system leadership and I partnered with Dr. Christina Wright (Spiritual Care) and Dr. Okeoma Mmeje (Medicine) to operationalize that concept. Our leadership team was truly interprofessional and it strengthened our ability to engage in perspective-taking. The current program managers, Samantha Guyah (SW), Kamau Ayubbi (Spiritual Care), and Prianka Shakil-Brown (SW), continue to evolve the service to mitigate and interrupt biases experienced by our patients and families. Their innovative, skillful, and empathic approach to healthcare inequities is directly impacting patient outcomes, interprofessional communications and dynamics, and health system policy.
(Left to right: Prianka Shakil Brown, Okeoma Mmeje, Kamau Ayubbi, Samantha Guyah, Erin Khang. Christina Wright not pictured.)