Creation of an Online Interprofessional Education Module for Executive Public Health Students

Abstract

Responding to the 2016 Council on Education for Public Health foundational competency requirement that students demonstrate the ability to “perform effectively in interprofessional teams,” the distance-based executive master’s program at Emory University developed an innovative interprofessional education (IPE) experience for geographically dispersed mid-career professionals. Because executive students are mid-career professionals from a variety of disciplines, they participated in this experience representing their professional roles and titles. IPE student groups represented at least three distinct disciplines. The executive program created a four-part online experience consisting of (1) a self-paced didactic module, (2) a synchronous case study group discussion, (3) small (three to five students) group development of a video solution to the case study, and (4) peer review of other groups’ case study solutions. The first-year pilot program was evaluated via standard online course evaluations and a separate evaluation survey sent immediately after completion of the complete experience. Of those responding to the standard course evaluation, 61.1% reported that they learned a great deal in the course and, of those responding to the immediate evaluation survey, 87.5% reported being very satisfied or satisfied with the experience. During the second iteration of the program, an additional survey, the Nebraska Inter-Professional Education Attitudes Survey identified improvement on 9 out of 19 attitudes toward interprofessional education. Overall, this IPE experience offered a unique way to employ the strengths of executive students and provide a meaningful IPE encounter for students in geographically diverse locations.