Using Our IDEAS (Interdisciplinary Education Apartment Simulation) to Promote Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice
Background:
Home-based care (HBC) is a valuable tool to provide care to medically underserved populations. Interprofessional education has become an integral part in undergraduate and professional curricula, however, applications of team-based training in HBC are often missing from curricula. When included, instruction in HBC often utilizes didactic instruction or laboratory experiences, of which are discipline specific and lack a focus on integration of team-based care.
Objectives:
Describe an innovative IPE model that uses a real-word home environment to promote interprofessional education and collaborative practice.
Assess the changes in interprofessional collaboration- related competencies in health professional students before and after completing a home-based care simulation.
Methods:
This innovative IPE model allows students from six different disciplines, dentistry, medicine, nursing, occupational therapy, pharmacy (P3 & P4 students), and physical therapy to participate in a simulated home visit in a real-world setting. Students participate in a patient interview with a standardized patient, conduct a home assessment, and complete a structured debriefing session in a house/ apartment located outside of the health sciences center. Faculty facilitators from each discipline develop the case scenario and create a home environment with potential medical issues and environmental hazards for the students to identify and educate each other about during the interview and assessment.
Student behaviors are measured using the Interprofessional Collaborative Competencies Attainment Survey (ICCAS), a 20-item retrospective pre/post analysis of interprofessional collaboration- related competencies.
Results:
Forty-one learners completed the activity through the Fall 2019 semester. ICCAS data showed that for every measure of perceived ability, learners showed a statistically significant increase at post-test measurement, compared to their ratings at the pre-test. In a majority of the cases, a modest or strong effect size was observed, suggesting a substantial increase in perceived ability.
Conclusions:
Through completion of this real-world collaborative experience, students will be better prepared for clinical rotations and careers as healthcare providers in home care environments and beyond where teamwork is essential. This activity promotes current healthcare trends such as the Aging in Place initiative and the need for improved transitions of care across healthcare settings.
Implications:
The use of standardized patients in a real-word environment provides an authentic, real-world experience for health professional students to understand the complexities of home-based care, transitions of care, and collaborative practice.
