The Rural and Underserved Service Track (TRUST): A novel, interprofessional, co-curricular program focusing on care for diverse, underserved populations

Abstract

The Rural and Underserved Service Track (TRUST) is a two-year, co-curricular, interprofessional program composed of students from medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and social work. Students participate in eight learning retreats, where students, healthcare professionals, patients, and faculty discuss the care needs of underserved populations, as well as ten service-learning activities, where students lead and deliver healthcare related activities to an audience of underserved community members. Each learning retreat consists of the following components: pre-retreat assignment, introductory presentation, panel discussion, clinical skill, and case study. Service activities are all student-led and cover a variety of topics, from affording medications to working with patients who have intellectual and developmental disabilities. TRUST has seven objectives, with the overall goal of training students to have the skills necessary to work on interprofessional teams and provide compassionate healthcare to diverse, underserved patient populations.The purpose of this manuscript is to describe the ways in which students perceived TRUST's learning objectives and to assess how the learning objectives supported their future clinical practice. Assessments were collected from students at multiple points throughout the TRUST program, including post-retreat assessments. Four-hundred and seventy-eight quotes were retrospectively analyzed from students' post-retreat assessments and ascribed to components of the learning retreat and learning objectives. Quotes were most often attributed to the retreat as a whole (38.3%) and the panel discussions (25.5%). More than half of all student quotes (58.4%) were ascribed to TRUST learning objectives, with “ethics and cultural sensitivity” (26.5%), “interprofessional team” (22.5%), “current and emerging health issues” (19.0%), and “barriers to care” (17.1%) occurring the most frequently, suggesting that these areas are likely the most impactful for students and represent a surrogate for achievement of learning objectives. Although prospective data is needed, early findings suggest that this novel interprofessional program has had a positive impact on students, faculty, and the community.