Medical Student Desire from Inter-professional Experience
Background: All first-year medical students at Duke are required to participate in an Inter-professional Education (IPE) Experience. Students then return in their 3rd and 4th years of training. The Duke IPE Experience allows multiple pre-licensure professional programs, including MD, PA, DPT, BSN, and NP, to work together seeing patients in the acute care setting of the emergency department (ED), Monday-Thursday from 5-9 pm. The composition of the students varies each session due to size constrains and does not include all professions on any one session. We sought to understand the medical students inter-professional goals and if there was a difference between the underclassmen verses the upperclassmen who have more clinical experience.
Design: For the academic year 2019-2020 a voluntary electronic survey was sent to all medical students in the first year (n=121), third year (n=133), and fourth year (n=113). The students ranked from 1 to 5 their desire to work with students from the following programs: PA, PT, NP, ABSN or pharmacy. The follow up question tried to elicit why they choose that profession.
Results: The response rate for survey completion was 34%. The first-year medical student responses were different from the upperclassman students (third and fourth years). The first-year students ranked as the profession they had most desire to work with as: PA (35%), ABSN (21%), NP (16%), PT (13%) and Pharmacy (11%). The upperclassmen selected the preferred profession to work with as Pharmacy (26%), ABSN (23%), PA (21%), PT (21%) and NP (9%). The first-year students ranked desire based on the profession that seemed most similar to theirs and wanted to learn more about the differences (50%). The senior students selected their preference because it seemed most different from theirs (41%). All students did identify a lack of exposure to certain professions as motivating their choice (30% first year, 28% upperclassman students).
Conclusion: As students’ progress thru their training their desire to work with different professions change. It is important to understand the student experience and goals to meet their needs regarding IPE education.
Reflections:As we design educational opportunities for students it is important to understand what the student desires from the IPE experience. We also need to consider that the student’s needs may change as they progress in training. Approximately a third of students felt that they have little exposure to certain professions and knowing what those professions are gives the opportunity to enhance the IPE experience.
