The interprofessional dedicated education unit: Design, implementation and evaluation of an innovative model for fostering interprofessional collaborative practice

Abstract

Abstract Clinically-based interprofessional education offers students an opportunity to witness and experience how interprofessional competencies are translated into practice. In 2011, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the MGH Institute of Health Professions (IHP) established the first interprofessional dedicated education unit (IPDEU) in the United States, adapting the dedicated education unit model used in nurse education. On the IPDEU, interprofessional groups of IHP students spent a half-day per week across a semester working on both clinical and interprofessional competencies under the guidance of IPDEU staff nurses and therapists who served as clinical instructors. Though student evaluations were consistently favorable, the program strained resources while being able to accommodate only a limited number of students. After three years, MGH and IHP charged a steering committee with re-envisioning a cost-effective instructional model of IPE in acute care, capable of supporting more students. This redesigned experience, introduced in 2015 and continuing today, provides students with a facilitated observational experience focused exclusively on competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice. Scheduled in interprofessional dyads, students spend one half-day on an IPDEU with a nurse interprofessional practice instructor (IPI) and a second half-day with an IPI from speech-language pathology, physical therapy, or occupational therapy. Instructors use active observation techniques to help students recognize interprofessional collaboration and its underlying competencies as they encounter it during their typical care-delivery day, with each session ending in a group debriefing. In evaluations, students indicate that the experience reinforces interprofessional competencies, highlighting the importance of the IPI role and debriefings. In this article, we describe the IPDEU's evolution, share results, offer evidence of the model's scalability and sustainability, and discuss factors contributing to its success in overcoming barriers to clinically-based IPE.