Breaking Down Silos: An Interprofessional Transitions of Care Simulation

In clinical environments, learners often separate into profession specific settings, mirroring the unfortunate reality of a fragmented health care system. While health professionals assume responsibility for serving the same patients, they do so in separate spaces, often without the shared tools necessary to provide coordinated care. In short, patients transition care settings, but health care practitioners do not. To provide patient-centered care across practice settings, learners must re-imagine team-based care. A team of interprofessional instructors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison collaborated to design, implement and assess a transitions of care (TOC) simulation, that included Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN), Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD), and Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) learners. The TOC simulation aimed to bridge the hospital, community pharmacy and primary care silos in which each practices by engaging learners from each setting in shared problem solving. The simulation experience used a blended learning approach, in which technology enabled teams of interprofessional learners to visualize, reflect upon, and apply a root cause analysis approach to actively discuss the care of a patient as they transitioned care settings. Through this experience, learners were able to expand their vision of team-based care across the full spectrum of transitions of care. It also facilitated shared understanding of quality care barriers each profession faces within unique practice settings.

The workshop will discuss how a conceptual framework (Kirkpatrick’s Expanded Outcomes Typology) was used to develop a mixed methods assessment plan providing formative feedback on the simulation learning experience. Outcome data stratified by levels of Kirkpatrick’s framework will be presented to demonstrate achievement of learning outcomes, and to explore methods for optimizing the learning environment in future iterations.

After attending the workshop participants will be able to…

1) Apply technology platforms to engage interprofessional learners across disconnected care settings in shared problem solving.

2) Design a multidimensional evaluation plan that enables continuous quality improvement of interprofessional simulation learning experiences.

3) Adapt interprofessional simulations to a variety of learning environments (in-person, blended, online learning).