Teaching Interprofessional Collaboration through Experiential Learning with Behavioural Psychology, Business, and Engineering Students

Abstract

Research has indicated that interprofessional collaboration improves client outcomes, enhances work life, optimizes costs, and allows professionals to tackle complex situations with increased knowledge and creativity. However, the inherent barriers and challenges of developing effective interprofessional teams have been documented in the literature. This research explores whether teaching interprofessional collaboration improves students’ perceptions of their own interprofessional collaborative competencies. This research provides two experiential learning projects to teach interprofessional collaboration among behavioural psychology, engineering, and business students. In Study 1, interprofessional teams were presented with complex cases, and teams created a functional assessment and developed a function-based treatment using technology developed by the engineering students. During Study 2, community stakeholders provided interprofessional teams with community-based challenges. Students worked collaboratively to analyze why the challenge existed and created innovative solutions based on behavioural economics. Significant increases in the Interprofessional Collaborative Competency Attainment Scale scores were found in both studies. Sentiment analysis results suggested that most students felt that the interprofessional collaboration project benefitted them in terms of communication, collaboration, and synergy. Findings support the effectiveness of IEP in increasing student perceptions of their interprofessional collaborative competency.