Michael
Iwama,
PhD, MSc, BSc, BScOT
Professor & Chief Program Strategist
Occupational Therapy Doctorate Division, School of Medicine, Duke University
Dr. Michael Iwama - is Professor and Chief Program Strategist in the Inaugural Occupational Therapy Doctorate Division, School of Medicine, Duke University. He is former Dean of the School of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences at the MGH Institute of Health Professions. Previously he served as tenured Professor & Chair of the Department of Occupational Therapy at Augusta University (formerly the Medical College of Georgia). Iwama is
author of the “Kawa Model” (‘Kawa’ is Japanese for ‘River’) – The first OT practice model developed outside of the West, which uses the metaphor of a river to depict the patient's experience of everyday life.
Presenting at the Nexus Summit:
One of many challenges to developing collaborative interprofessional teams is the lack of a common language that diverse professional groups can effectively use to communicate. Care professionals also approach each patient/client case through the frameworks and specialized languages/narratives of their own disciplines, posing challenges to efficient and effective care. The Kawa (Japanese for River) Model was developed to mitigate problems and blind-spots that can occur when health professionals from diverse disciplines attempt to deliver best practice care in concert with their diverse care…