NAP Society News

Abstract

The task of developing large-scale interprofessional education (IPE) across multiple health professions schools to meet accreditation standards is daunting. This curricular resource describes Interprofessional Education and Development (IPED), a required longitudinal course addressing essential interprofessional competencies for entry-level health professions students. Competency domains include teamwork/collaboration, values/ethics, and quality/safety. Materials developed by interprofessional curriculum committees include content from our longstanding Ethics in the Health Profession course1 as well as TEAMSTEPPS2 and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Open School.3 IPED uses team-based learning (TBL) methodology to create active individual and team learning experiences standardized for a large number of student teams using a small number of faculty. As outcomes of the course, students are able to:1. Demonstrate knowledge, skills and behaviors of teamwork/collaboration, values/ethics, and quality/safety as an interprofessional team member.2. Demonstrate collaboration, teaming skills and behaviors as an interprofessional team.3. Identify the unique roles and responsibilities of each health care professional within the interprofessional team.4. Articulate a shared, interprofessional identity as a health care professional.Individual readiness assurance tests (iRAT) and final exam scores demonstrate knowledge acquisition across competency domains for each student (Outcome 1). Team readiness assurance test (tRAT) scores demonstrate team acquisition of knowledge, skills and abilities (Outcome 2). Students’ self-assessed ability to explain skills necessary for effective team functioning (Outcome 2) and roles and responsibilities (Outcome 3) increase significantly from before to after the course. The majority of students agree that IPED improves their ability to work collaboratively with other health professionals, and helps prepare them to participate as a member of a collaborative interprofessional workforce (Outcome 4). This intervention is important because it demonstrates that large-scale IPE for entry-level health professions students is feasible in a longitudinal TBL format, and that it successfully develops necessary baseline knowledge and skills for interprofessional practice.