CLARION: A Novel Interprofessional Approach to Health Care Education

Abstract

The authors describe the development and impact of CLARION, a student-run organization at the University of Minnesota founded in 2001 and dedicated to furthering interprofessional education for health professions students. CLARION's student founders recognized that three recent reports from the Institute of Medicine will fuel significant changes in health professions education. Moreover, they deduced that targeted, interprofessional education in the preclinical years could provide fundamental skills and understanding needed to make today's patient care safer and more effective. By engaging health care professionals and faculty, CLARION creates and conducts extracurricular, interprofessional experiences for students that are reflective of the six IOM aims for health care. Student members are from four separate schools of the university's academic health center: medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and public health. The organization's capstone event, the Interprofessional Case Competition, challenges interprofessional teams of students to compete in conducting and presenting a root cause analysis of a fictitious sentinel event. The interprofessional organizational structure of the CLARION board models the kind of interprofessional equality needed to effectively solve problems in the health care system. The interaction among students from different health professions has led them to many new understandings about health care and the realization that many fundamental biases about other professions are firmly rooted in students before they enter the workplace. CLARION has enabled continued professional development of students, faculty, and practitioners, leading individual students to enhanced understanding of the health care system. It is a grassroots catalyst that has prompted faculty to reexamine traditional health professions curricula and look for ways to integrate more interprofessional opportunities into it.

Patient Safety Knowledge and Its Determinants in Medical Trainees

“…To date, a wide variety of pedagogical approaches have been attempted to educate trainees in patient safety: independent study projects, 11 monthly workshops, 12 outcome cards, 13 root cause analyses by interprofessional teams, 14 web-based teaching, 15 etc. Further research is needed to evaluate the relative effectiveness of these varied methodologies.…”

Interprofessional Education: Definitions, Student Competencies, and Guidelines for Implementation

“…5 The IOM has clearly stated that patients received safer, high quality care when health care professionals worked effectively in a team, communicated productively, and understood each other's roles. 5 Although there is an abundance of evidence supporting the IPE of health professions students, [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] this is not the norm in most schools and colleges of pharmacy. This review of IPE presents definitions, provides supporting evidence, outlines the need, proposes student competencies and objectives, summarizes the barriers to implementation, and defines elements critical for successful implementation.…”

Game—The Dressing Change Game

“…Another game that teaches similar concepts is Friday Night at the Emergency Room (FNER; Johnson et al 2006, Linden 2010. FNER is a board game played by four to eight students who simulate the processes managing the flow of patients through a hospital.…”