An Interprofessional Education Program to Enhance Quality Patient Outcomes

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Primary Author:</td>
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Kathy J. Ellison, PhD, RN</td>
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Co-Principal Investigators/Collaborators:</td>
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N/A</td>
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Organization:</td>
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Auburn University</td>
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Abstract</h2>
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Purpose</h3>
<p>The purpose of the project was to engage a cohort of second year pharmacy and nursing students in an interprofessional team collaborative learning and problem solving experience.</p>
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Background</h3>
<p>The Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice (IPEC, 2011), address interprofessional knowledge and skills that are critical to safe, high quality patient care. Auburn University Schools of Nursing and Pharmacy sought to create an innovative curriculum aimed at preparing students for interprofessional collaborative practice. As students prefer to learn through collaborative activities and projects versus didactic lectures (Johnson and Johnson,1986; Totten, Sills, Digby, & Russ, 1991), creative and meaningful projects, and assignments were developed to engage the two groups of students. </p>
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Materials & Methods</h3>
<p>A cohort of 150 second year pharmacy students and 200 second year nursing students will be divided into twelve‐member teams and take a year‐long interprofessional course. Each team will be matched with a faculty mentor from nursing or pharmacy and assigned either a hospital or community clinical site. Online experiences include modules developed from the competencies including reasons why we have quality/safety issues in healthcare, values/ethics for interprofessional practice, roles/responsibilities, interprofessional communication, and teams and teamwork (IPEC, 2011).Teams will participate in a simulated medication error experience to improve their collaborative working skills. The first semester teams meet with their mentor and individuals from the clinical environment to choose a relevant patient safety/quality issue. After working in the environment and researching the problem, students meet with their mentor to explore an improvement process. In the second semester course students develop and implement collaborative recommendations for addressing the problem. </p>
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Results</h3>
<p>Students will be pre and post tested for IPE competencies with team skills and collaborative assessment scales and teams will present their completed projects to the larger group. </p>
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Conclusion</h3>
<p align="left">Learners are expected to benefit from the interprofessional teamwork training, their heightened level of collaborative responsibility for patient outcomes, and the continuity they experience over two semesters addressing real-world problems.</p>
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Bibliography</h3>
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Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel. (2011). Core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice: Report of an expert panel. Washington, D.C.: Interprofessional Education Collaborative.</li>
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Johnson, R. T., & Johnson, D. W. (1986). Action research: Cooperative learning in the science classroom. Science and Children, 24, 31-32.</li>
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Totten, S., Sills, T., Digby, A., & Russ, P. (1991). Cooperative learning: A guide to research. New York: Garland.</li>
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<p>© Improvement Science Research Network, 2012</p>
<p>The ISRN published this as received and with permission from the author(s).</p>