Developing Simulation-based Interprofessional Education: Nursing and SLP Students

Abstract

The World Health Organization recommends interprofessional training for health care students to create a collaborative practice-ready workforce. Yet students in health profession programs remain educated in silos, and communication problems among health care personnel have been implicated as a cause of most patient errors by the American Association of Critical Care Nurses, Institute of Medicine, and Joint Commission. These organizations recommend that health care professionals receive training in educational programs that develop effective interdisciplinary communication skills. The purpose of this mixed methods pilot study was to assess student learning from a newly implemented interprofessional simulation scenario that addressed identification and management of patients with swallowing difficulties. The authors recruited 45 nursing and speech-language pathology students. Two instruments were used to measure quantitative outcomes including the Simulation Design Scale and the Student Satisfaction and Self Confidence in Learning questionnaire. The results were statistically significant for both surveys. Qualitative data were obtained during simulation debriefing sessions, and were coded and analyzed. Two emergent themes indicated that IPE simulation experiences are valued by students from both disciplines. The authors recommend incorporating IPE simulation in the curriculum for health care educational programs. Research ArticleOpen Access IntroductionStudents in health profession programs are traditionally educated in silos. Upon graduation, they are expected to function as part of a health care team, collaborating with others to care for patients from admission to discharge. It is hard to imagine a winning team composed of individuals with complementary and essential skills who have not practiced working together.Communication problems among health care personnel have been implicated as a cause of most patient errors (American Association of Colleges of Nurses [1][2][3][4]. The Joint Commission [5,6] According to the WHO [8], interprofessional education (IPE) involves teaching and training students how to learn about, from and with each other using interprofessional teams (Figure 1). IPE purportedly trains safe health care professionals who are ready to work in collaborative health care teams resulting in improved patient health outcomes [9]. Further, IPE is highly recommended by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association [10] as well as the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. See figure 2 for additional benefits resulting from IPE [8].Nurses and other disciplines are constantly faced with the challenge of handling providing care to patients with dysphagia. If not properly diagnosed, one major risk includes aspiration pneumonia which has an extensive impact on health with regard to morbidity, cost, and mortality [11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. Up to 15% -30% of pneumonia cases in hospitalized patients is due to aspiration [11][12][13]. According to the ICD-9 code * Corresponding Author: D...

Standardized Patients in Communication Sciences and DIsorders: Past, Present and Future Directions

“…While IPE has recently begun to receive more systematic discussion and implementation in CSD (e.g., Gurevich et al, 2019;Ludwig et al, 2019;Rosa-Lugo et al, 2017), very few CSD studies have used SPs for IPE (see reviews by Wallace et al, 2017;Zraick et al, 2014). A recent IPE study which used SPs was conducted by Noureddine, Hagge, and Brady (2016), who had an SP who was a stroke survivor portray a person with aphasia, apraxia of speech, and left hemiparesis. This SP presented with swallowing complaints.…”

Student-Reported Attitudes during an Interprofessional Palliative Care Learning Experience: Implications for Dual-Professional Identity, Interdisciplinary Bias, and Patient Outcomes

“…11 Faculty are beginning to participate in specialized training to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to design, implement, and assess literature-based IPE events and activities. 12 Competencies PC has rapidly grown over the last 15 years and represents a significant paradigm shift in health care delivery, yet it represents a gap in nursing and speechlanguage-pathology curricula. 16 The World Health Organization defines PC as an approach to health care services that improves the quality of life of patients and their families who face multiple problems typically associated with serious illness.…”

Original Interprofessional Simulations to Train Students in CSD and Related Health Professions in Team-Based Health Care

“…Many of these reports focus on collaboration and decision-making skills of specialized health-related professionals in focused clinical scenarios such as agitation management in emergency care (Wong et al, 2018), palliative care (Saylor et al, 2016), stroke management (Karpa et al, 2018), or assessment of sexual assault (Lee et al, 2019). Several studies include students in communication sciences; however, most of these involve medically oriented scenarios such as dysphagia assessments or speaking valve placement for a tracheotomized patient (Estis et al, 2015;Noureddine et al, 2016;Potter & Allen, 2013). Simulations involving developmental disorders are relatively rare and the use of SPs for portraying a caregiver's (rather than patient's) role is uncommon, although some available publications utilized SPs in this way (Dotger et al, 2008;Estis et al, 2015;Marken et al, 2010).…”