Scaffolding Interprofessional Education

Abstract

Fragmentation of health care negatively impacts quality; one of the contributing factors may be ineffective collaboration among health care professionals. This article describes the implementation of an interprofessional education curriculum for graduate students enrolled in nursing, psychology, and speech-language pathology programs. Over 3 semesters, students engaged in interprofessional collaboration modules, unfolding case studies, virtual simulation, and shared case planning experiences. The curriculum's impact on students' attitudes and values toward interprofessional collaborative practice was measured.

Scaffolding in Health Sciences Education Programmes: An Integrative Review

“…Lauerer et al [ 38 ] applied scaffolding in sequencing the content on behavioural health concepts, while Frantz and Rhoda [ 39 ] and Zook et al [ 40 ] sequenced content related to IPE. Coombs [ 41 ] and Duff et al [ 42 ] sequenced content on community and oral health and started with patient assessments before functional knowledge on diagnosing pathologies, planning, and implementing interventions to solve identified problems.…”

“…Miller et al [ 46 ] utilised a scaffolded sequence of writing assignments to overcome academic writing exertions. Students constructed foundational knowledge on IPE [ 40 ], behavioural health concepts [ 38 ] and community health [ 41 ] before engaging in intra- or inter-professional teams [ 38 , 40 , 41 ]. Frantz and Rhoda [ 39 ] designed an IPE curriculum following scholarships of teaching, application, integration, and discovery, while Coombs [ 41 ] assigned students to work on patient assessments skills before creating a care plan.…”

“…Modules were designed by structuring and sequencing learning to start from the either the face-to-face classroom or an online classroom, flipped classrooms [ 50 ] through simulated environments [ 44 ] and ending with learning in the clinical or community contexts [ 39 – 42 ]. An example was that of a multi-semester module that was designed to start with classroom learning of related IPE principles and core domains before assigning students to online IPE learning activities and communities to manage virtual or real-case problems requiring inter-professional teamwork and collaborative care [ 40 ]. Similarly, Duff et al [ 42 ] explained how they deliberately increased learning of oral health from low to high fidelity by assigning students to engage in classroom activities before engaging in simulation laboratory activities.…”

“…The sequencing of the content and learning tasks promoted learning built on prior knowledge [ 38 , 47 ]. Learning tasks were scaffolded by focusing on single, small successive chunks of foundational concepts before complex situations that demand knowledge integration [ 40 , 45 , 69 ]. Similar programme design principles related to task scaffolding were described as requirements for enhancing the learning of complex skills, such as scaffolding metacognition, diagnostic reasoning, clinical reasoning, psychomotor skills, inter-professional practice, academic writing, and designing treatment plans [ 76 – 78 ].…”

“…The intervention group, who received prompts for representation scaffold, demonstrated significant improvement in diagnostic efficiency Herrington and Schneidereith [ 52 ] Peer-reviewed article – Nurse Educator USA To design a scaffolded simulation-integrated nursing curriculum Empirical – quantitative surveys Nursing programmes – (module not specified) Skills laboratory No theory mentioned Stakeholder inputs were sought to structure and sequence concept-based simulations in undergraduate nursing programmes following Benner's competency framework. Scaffolding allowed meaningful, coherent connections across the programme, curricular-enhancing integration of simulations in the programmes Zook et al [ 40 ] Peer-reviewed article – Nurse Educator USA To describe the scaffolding design and implementation of an inter-professional education curriculum Empirical –quantitative – prospective and non-experimental 1-group longitudinal study Doctor of nursing practice, psychology, and speech-language pathology – (inter-professional education course [IPE]) Online and simulation platforms No theory mentioned A multi-semester IPE curriculum was reviewed to structure and sequence its content from simple to complex situations. Through online platforms, students began the module by learning foundational IPE and teamwork principles.…”