An assisted living interprofessional education and practice geriatric screening clinic (IPEP-GSC): a description and evaluation

Abstract

As the U.S. population ages and lives longer, we need to assure that future providers are prepared to work in highly functioning interprofessional teams to deliver person-centered care for older adults with complex chronic conditions. Assisted living facilities are ideal venues in which to train interprofessional health sciences students in providing such care. After monthly clinics involving interprofessional students (from the colleges of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health, and school of social work) providing team-based care to older adults, students' post-clinic evaluations indicated perceived improvements in knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions about aging and care of older adults. In addition, participating older adults reported improved self-worth and enjoyment. The curriculum, evaluation outcomes, and lessons learned are described to support program replication.

Scoping Pharmacy Students’ Learning Outcomes: Where Do We Stand?

“…Particularly, adaptation problems, such as the need for more initial support or delineation of expectations were detected. In addition, students’ intervention seemed to improve patients’ outcomes, such as (i) self-worth, self-care and enjoyment in elder-centered care; (ii) hospital readmissions; or (iii) the health of diabetic patients [38,39,40,41,42]. These findings support the movement towards core EPAs being implemented for new pharmacy graduates in the USA today [54].…”

“…Additionally, different instruments were applied to collect information on students’ outcomes, such as skills checklists, in-depth interviews, agreement level on Likert scales for different constructs (i.e., tools on self-perceived knowledge, attitudes, communication, interprofessional practice, interdisciplinary education or confidence), or multiple-choice examinations. Contrary to what would be desirable, only some studies have applied pre- and post-surveys, and the number of studies enrolling multiple evaluations was also limited [5,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52]. On the one hand, all of these limitations compromise the accuracy and representativeness of the present study findings and conclusions; on the other hand, this clearly shows the need to improve the robustness of learning outcome evaluations in this area.…”

“…The studies that evaluated undergraduates’ outcomes in real practice were the most frequently identified, which may reflect the relevance of evaluating students’ performance in actual practice settings [34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42], moving from competence acquisition to suitable professional activities (EPAs) [54]. The studies were implemented in health systems, such as medicine services or pharmacies.…”

“…Undergraduates’ skills, or perception of interprofessional experiences, attitudes and knowledge seemed to improve in real practice [34,35,38,39], although qualitative and quantitative data on students’ performance should be collected during these programs to monitor their progression and adaptation. Particularly, adaptation problems, such as the need for more initial support or delineation of expectations were detected.…”

“…Overall, a positive correlation between a certain teaching strategy and a certain educational outcome seems to exist. However, additional studies are required to check this assumption, knowing, for instance, that perception of interprofessional experiences, attitudes and knowledge of undergraduates seemed to improve in real practice [34,35,38,39].…”