Development of Intentional Interprofessional Education (IPE) Experiences in Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience (APPE) Rotations Within a School of Pharmacy
Background: Most pharmacy student experiential IPE occurs in a naturally occurring and non-deliberate fashion. Opportunities for interprofessional teamwork may be limited to the rotational environment and access to other disciplines and their students. The purpose of this project was to provide a diverse series of intentional IPE experiences to increase exposure to a greater number of pharmacy students in their APPE rotations during their final clinical year.
Design: Intentional IPE experiences were developed in a number of settings and were scheduled within faculty APPE’s or as free standing rotations for Pharmacy Class of 2019
Assessment: IPE field encounters were captured through the CORE ELMS platform for Experiential Education to document IPE occurring throughout core rotations. Reflections as well as pre and post administration of the Interprofessional Attitudes Scale (IPAS) for large cohort activities were collected for intentionally designed IPE activities. At the end of the APPE year, students were given the IPEC Self-Competency Scale (Dow) and also participated in the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) Graduating Survey which measured IPE experiences.
Results: Approximately 80% (n=297) of the Class of 2019 documented participation in intentional IPE activities. Field encounters to capture IPE on core rotations were completed by 74.5% of students, and encounters with physicians were the top healthcare professional they interacted with. The IPEC Self Competency Survey results were limited by lack of pre-APPE survey, however ending IPEC Self Competency showed the majority of students feeling confident about their competency in IPE. The AACP Graduating Student Survey results showed that that 97.6% reported Strongly Agree/ Agree that they could engage as a member of an interprofessional healthcare team.
Conclusion: Development of an Intentional IPE framework can ensure that APPE students have the opportunity to engage in interprofessional collaboration and teamwork activities. Student validated diverse opportunities for intentional IPE and rated themselves competent to perform as part of the interprofessional team. Future directions include expanding from 80% to as much as 100% of PharmD student participation in intentional IPE activities, developing faculty preceptors to deliver intentional IPE activities within their syllabus, improving IPEC Self Competency Survey pre-response rates, and exploring further means of assessment of IPE Teamwork.
Implications: Ensuring students have diverse opportunities for intentional IPE will satisfy the requirements for Standard 11 of the 2016 ACPE Accreditation Standards. Capturing student self-assessment of all IPE, both organic and intentional, is also important when developing and expanding on interprofessional opportunities.
