Working together: Using a unique approach to evaluate an interactive and clinic-based longitudinal interprofessional education experience with 13 professions

Abstract

Interprofessional education (IPE) involving an interactive and longitudinal clinic experience at an inner-city charitable clinic from September to May 2013/2014 was evaluated. Pre-, mid-, and post-intervention data were collected from students in 13 different professions including medicine (medical and physician assistant), dentistry (dental and dental hygiene), nursing (undergraduate and clinical nurse specialist), public health, pharmacy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, nutritional sciences, speech and language pathology, and social work. To evaluate their interprofessional attitudes, students completed the TeamSTEPPS Teamwork Attitudes Questionnaire (T-TAQ) and Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale (RIPLS). They also completed a unique measure, healthcare professionals circles diagrams (HPCDs), that indicated student conceptualisation of a healthcare team caring for a complex patient, along with perception of their team's progress towards meeting patient goals. Results from the T-TAQ and RIPLS scores indicated small but significant increases from pre- to post-intervention (p = 0.005 and 0.012, respectively). Analysis of the HPCDs revealed significant increases in students' perceptions of the types of interprofessional team members, relationships, and communication between professions to provide medical care to patients (p < 0.01). Most HPCDs included pharmacists, nurses, and physicians as part of the care team at all time points. Students significantly increased their inclusion of dentistry, public health, social work, and physician assistants as members of the healthcare team from pre- to post-intervention. Implications of our data indicated the importance of IPE interventions that include not only classroom-based sessions, but actual patient care experiences within interprofessional teams. It also reinforced the importance of new and unique methods to assess IPE.

New strategy in education of health professionals in Serbia: Analysis of students’ readiness for inter-professional education

“…Students' attitudes among five educational profiles in this study, assessed by RIPLS, indicate students' readiness for IPE. Similar results were obtained in previous studies as well [4][5][6][7][8][9][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. Accordingly, there were differences among students' attitudes based on their study profile both in our study and studies conducted in other countries [4,6,7,[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20].…”

“…The implementation of IPE as an educational strategy requires overcoming many structural and organizational barriers, but it is difficult to alter ambivalent or negative students' attitudes [2,4,5]. Making this alteration is also one of the primary objectives in planning IPE outcomes aimed at improving teamwork and developing collaborative practice [4,5,7]. Therefore, the assessment of the students' baseline attitudes is significant for the initial steps towards integration of this educational strategy into curricula [4,5].…”

“…Despite being internationally recognized as an important educational strategy, the integration of IPE into the standard curriculum remains a significant challenge [5]. Numerous barriers in implementation and achievement of positive IPE outcomes are described in the literature, and students' baseline attitudes such as stereotyping and prejudice are often cited as the biggest barrier of all [6][7][8]. Negative students' attitudes can be a major barrier in the learning process, and it is important to know the concept of "the readiness for IPE", that is, to assess students' attitudes towards IPE because it underlies the essence of accepting this educational strategy [8].…”

Clinical dental technicians in the United Kingdom: A qualitative understanding of the experiences, of practices and challenges of communication for dental professionals

“…[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] The second concentrates on Intraprofessional Education or "IPE" Intraprofessional education or "IPE." 5,20,29,[33][34][35][36][37][38][39] The third area of communication literature that is prominent in the discourse is that of treatment outcomes or "patient-centred" care. [40][41][42][43][44] Finally, the concept of patient perspective is another topic that quite rightly receives academic focus.…”

“…48,p.2 Of the recent and fundamental academic literature that emphasises the importance of communication between the various members of a dental team specifically between other dental technicians and their engagement with dentists, 27,[49][50][51][52][53][54][55] there is no solely qualitative material concerning the communication between CDTs and other dental professionals. 30,32,37,38,41,56 This dearth of academic publications is significant given that the relationship and experiences between these three groups create and underpin service provision and best practice. In conjunction with the above three factors, this paper also draws upon the social science concept of "medical dominance", [57][58][59][60][61] to discuss the structural dominance of dentists over other dental health professionals-a perceived norm for CDTs.…”