Interprofessional Education Workshop Outcomes: Learning and Understanding Professional Roles in Stroke Care

Abstract

Background and Purpose. If patient outcomes are to be optimized, students from every health care discipline should be prepared to work in interprofessional teams. The purpose of this paper was to describe a novel interprofessional education (IPE) stroke workshop for health care studies across 8 disciplines. An additional purpose was to examine changes in student learning outcomes and understanding of the roles of other disciplines in stroke care following an interprofessional stroke workshop. Description and Evaluation. Participants completed a multistaged interprofessional workshop that included collaborative history taking with a real patient and development of a comprehensive plan of care. Of the 413 students from 8 health care disciplines who participated in the workshop, 334 participants completed pre and posttests and permitted use of their data to measure outcomes. Study participants included 29 physical therapist (PT) students, as well as students from athletic training, health management systems, physician assistant studies, occupational therapy, pharmacy, nursing, and speechlanguage pathology. Outcomes. Analysis of pre and posttest results demonstrated significant changes in some but not all aspects of the students’ understanding of stroke, as well as each discipline's role and responsibility in stroke prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. The results for the PT students were similar to the results demonstrated by the entire group. Discussion and Conclusion. Although examination of pre and posttest scores demonstrated that IPE involving collaborative practice activities can help prepare students to work in interprofessional teams, less learning related to professional roles and responsibilities occurred than expected. The workshop faculty plan to use the results of the current study to develop, refine, and examine future IPE activities.