Influence of Uniprofesssional versus Interprofessional Team Learning Activities on the Acquisition of Anatomical Knowledge: A Randomized Crossover Study

Abstract

Interprofessional education (IPE) aims to cultivate collaborative skills especially in health professional students and is implemented by an increasing number of educational programs. IPE is well received by both students and faculty members citing a wide range of benefits including improved learning, positive professional identity, and better patient care. However, the implementation of IPE may have a negative influence on an already overloaded basic and clinical science curriculum or can be impeded by several factors such as course content, time constraints and scheduling conflicts. In this study, we quantitatively evaluated the influence of IPE on students’ ability to learn in a basic science course. A total of 270 professional students from three different programs over two academic years participated in this randomized crossover study measuring anatomical knowledge acquisition during two learning activities where students learned both course content and interprofessional concepts in a neuroscience course. The students were randomized into two teams and participated in two separate small-group learning activities, one in a uniprofessional team and another in an interprofessional team. Each student acted as their own control and took pre- and post-tests for each learning activity. The data was analyzed by a repeated measures ANOVA to assess any differences between learning neuroanatomy concepts in uniprofessional and interprofessional teams. Main effects for the ANOVA included learning group type (uniprofessional vs interprofessional), the order in which students participated in the learning activities, professional program (pathologist assistant, physical therapy, or podiatry), and academic year (2016 vs. 2017). Neither the learning group type nor any of the other main effects were found to significantly affect learning (p > .05). Additionally, none of the two-way interactions between learning group type and the other main effects were significant (p > .05). Overall, the introduction of interprofessional group learning activities did not impact the students’ test scores when compared to uniprofessional group learning activities. With limited IPE opportunities and scheduling constraints, our data suggested that the inclusion or exclusion of IPE during a basic science course does not affect the students’ anatomy learning outcomes. However, IPE in non-clinical courses could provide other benefits in health professional students’ professional development which warrants further investigation.