Journal of Research in Interprofessional Practice and Education (JRIPE)
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Promoting Interprofessional Collaboration: A Pilot Project Using Simulation in the Virtual World of Second Life
Get PDFBackground: Contemporary health services increasingly call for teamwork and interprofessional collaboration, though undergraduate curricula provide few opportunities for students to develop the necessary skills. This article presents the results of an innovative pilot project focusing on providing an interprofessional clinical learning experience for students using the virtual world of Second Life.Methods and Findings: A pilot project was implemented and tested on a small group of students studying at two institutions in four healthcare programs. Qualitative descriptive methods were employed to analyze semi-structured interview transcripts. The evaluation revealed that participants were easily able to manage the technologies associated with Second Life and the learning and teaching strategies were engaging and useful. While the project provided students with an opportunity to learn more about the role of other health professionals and their contribution to patient care, it will require some development before it achieves in full the aim to promote interprofessional collaboration. Conclusions: Simulation in virtual worlds such as Second Life offers promise in the area of interprofessional education
Developing a Recursive Evaluation Plan of a Complex Interprofessional Healthcare Education Initiative
Get PDFBackground: A university interprofessional education (IPE) and interprofessional practice (IPP) initiative is a complex undertaking: incorporating multiple system levels (administration, faculty, students, patients), integrating many theoretical perspectives, and coordinating a host of individual IPE research projects. Guidance for evaluating such an IPE initiative is lacking.Methods and Findings: We describe five key challenges to evaluating the effectiveness of such an initiative, and the processes and tools we have developed to meet those challenges. We draw from recent developments in evaluation science to theoretically ground our description. Additionally, we share concrete tools we have developed in the process. By tacking between theoretical and concrete aspects of our efforts, we hope to both provide ideas for other IPE initiatives, as well as provide a basis for future research comparing cases (complex university IPE initiatives).Conclusions: While all complex IPE university initiatives are unique, we suspect that they share many common evaluation challenges. By framing these common practical challenges as common theoretical challenges, we seek to offer a description of our concrete case as well as a basis for future comparison of similar initiatives
Changes in Pharmacy Students After Experiencing Interprofessional Education Activities
Get PDFBackground: Interprofessional education (IPE) has become increasingly important among healthcare professionals. The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of IPE experiences on pharmacy students’ perceived level of comfort with and level of reliability regarding other healthcare professionals. Methods and Findings: A survey of third- and fourth-year pharmacy students (N = 190) was analyzed using descriptive statistics and bivariate analyses to address the study objectives. Students experienced a significant increase in their level of comfort with questioning other professions after IPE (pre IPE: 5.45 ± 2.24 and post IPE: 7.22 ± 1.62, p<0.01) and being questioned by other professions (pre IPE: 5.39 ± 2.24 and post IPE: 7.04 ± 1.68, p<0.01). Students also experienced a significant increase in the perceived reliability and accuracy of information from nurses after IPE (pre IPE: 5.91 ± 1.82 and post IPE: 6.41 ± 1.62, p = 0.01). Conclusions: Pharmacy students who experienced any IPE perceived themselves as more comfortable with questioning and being questioned by other healthcare professionals than students without IPE. Additional research is needed to more clearly define the benefits of IPE and how it should be designed
The Use of a Modified Delphi Technique to Inform the Development of Best Practice in Interprofessional Training for Collaborative Primary Healthcare
Get PDFBackground: Primary healthcare (PHC) education and training is directed to a diverse range of health professionals at undergraduate, postgraduate, and professional levels. Increasing emphasis is being placed on PHC professionals working together in delivering better care and improving patient outcomes. This article reports on using a modified Delphi technique to determine the level of consensus on a series of statements across four domains of interprofessional education (IPE) for collaborative practice: big picture, organization, capabilities, teaching, and learning. Methods and Findings: The modified Delphi technique used three Delphi rounds: the first round comprising workshops, interviews, or online survey; the remaining rounds used online surveys. A panel of 56 PHC medical, nursing, allied health, and workforce experts participated. There was consensus on a set of capabilities for interprofessional learning outcomes and on a range of teaching and learning strategies. Areas for further consideration included identifying interprofessional training opportunities through continuing professional development, and tailoring team-based approaches to diverse PHC settings. Conclusion: The modified Delphi technique used in this project demonstrated a successful engagement of a heterogeneous panel of PHC experts. The principles of IPE for collaborative practice and strategies for delivering interprofessional training could apply across various PHC settings.  
Comparison of Communications Styles Amongst Students in Allied Health Professions Programs: How Do Our Students Communicate with Other Healthcare Providers?
Get PDFBackground: Optimal patient outcomes require communication between providers in multiple professions to initiate referrals, communicate patient treatment, and coordinate care. While there is a clear need for increased understanding of the terminology, skills, and scopes of practice of professional colleagues, these tools are of limited effectiveness if there is poor interpersonal communication between team members. Multiple bodies for Interprofessional Practice and Education (IPP/IPE) identify communication skills as an integral part of education. In fact, the third competency domain set down by the Interprofessional Education Collaborative, Interprofessional Communication, states that professionals should, “Recognize how one’s own uniqueness, including experience level, expertise, culture, power, and hierarchy within the healthcare team, contributes to effective communication, conflict resolution, and positive interprofessional working relationships” [1].Methods and Findings: As part of a required interprofessional competence course, first-year students in ten health professions programs completed the Personal Coaching Style Inventory (PSCI) to self-identify personal communication styles. A series of one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) analyses followed by Tukey post-hoc analyses were performed in order to identify significant differences in PSCI component scores between programs. Within groups, students discussed personal and cohort-wide findings as they impact teamwork. The majority of students identified with the Mediator style. Differences in style were also found in relation to profession, gender, and race. The activity prompted discussion of varied roles in team dynamics, and how differences in style could affect interprofessional teamwork.Conclusions: Self-awareness of personal communication styles as well as predominant styles of other health professions may enhance interprofessional communication\skills. The skill with which students approach their team roles in heterogeneous groups following graduation has the potential to increase team functionality and patient outcomes
Teamwork, Leadership and Communication: Collaboration Basics for Health Professionals
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Training Spiritual Care in Palliative Care in Teaching Hospitals in the Netherlands (SPIRIT-NL): A Multicentre Trial.
No full textBackground: In the Netherlands, the spiritual dimension in healthcare became marginal in the second part of the twentieth century. In the Dutch healthcare system, palliative care is not a medical specialization and teaching hospitals do not have specialist palliative care units with specialized palliative care teams. Palliative care in these hospitals is delivered by healthcare professionals in general departments (mainly curative focused ones), and is based on multidisciplinary guidelines supported by palliative care consultation teams. A national multidisciplinary guideline on spiritual care is included, but standardized training based on this guideline still lacks. Implementation of this guideline is expected to have a positive effect on quality of care but is in an early state, the role of the specialists in this field—the healthcare chaplains—is developing. The objective of this article is to present the protocol of this study and stimulate discussion about methods of research on spirituality and spiritual care.Methods and Findings: This action research study is planned as an explorative multicentre trial. Healthcare chaplains of ten teaching hospitals will offer training onspiritual care in palliative care for healthcare professionals. What is the effect of this intervention on the competences of clinical teams? What is the effect on the perceived care and treatment as experienced by patients? The effects of the intervention on the competences of the clinicians will be measured once pre-study and twice post-study. Effects on patients’ physical symptoms and spiritual distress, and the perceived focus of caregivers on their spiritual needs or existential questions will also be measured pre- and post-study
Examining Professional Stereotypes in an Interprofessional Education Simulation Experience
No full textBackground: Interprofessional education (IPE) provides a platform for early professional socialization, potentially affecting the accuracy of stereotypes among health professions students. The purpose of this study was to implement an interprofessional simulation with nursing, respiratory therapy (RT), and speech language pathology (SLP) students, and using the Student Stereotype Rating Questionnaire, evaluate how an IPE simulation approach may alter stereotypes that learners carry with them related to themselves and professions other than their own.Methods and Findings: Participants rated the extent to which they believe attributes, based on nine professional characteristics, apply to either their own profession (autostereotypes), other professions (heterostereotypes), or their own profession as seen by others (perceived autostereotypes) with the Student Stereotype Rating Questionnaire (SSRQ). A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design was used, and descriptive and analytical statistics conducted within and across groups. Participant impressions of the IPE experience are presented. Main limitations included smaller sample size of RT and SLP participants.Conclusions: Results showed a significant difference from pre- to post-IPE simulation in nursing heterostereoptype, autostereotype, and perceived autostereotype scores. No significant difference was seen in hetereostereotypes of RT and SLP students. Overall, student impressions were positive. Recommendations include study replication for larger sample size
Moving the Interprofessional Education Research Agenda Beyond the Limits of Evaluating Student Satisfaction
Get PDFBackground: Much of the research on the impact of interprofessional education (IPE) interventions is hampered by a lack of focus on whether they were successfully translated to effective interprofessional practice (IPP).Methods and Findings: This article reports the outcomes of a think tank of Australian IPE researchers who articulated these gaps and brainstormed types of research and research questions needed to help address these gaps. A social constructivist theoretical approach was proposed, including more ethnographic and longitudinal investigation.Conclusions: A greater focus on theory is needed to understand the underlying processes involved in IPE, IPP, and the transition between them. This will involve researchers employing more qualitative and mixed-method approaches in addition to the quantitative methods that appear to dominate this field, currently
Do Interprofessional Educational Programmes on Eating Disorders Provide Proximal and Distal Benefits? Findings from a National Cohort Collected from 1998 to 2010
Get PDFBackground: Many programs are launched aiming to raise knowledge and competence in treating eating disorders, yet few of them have been evaluated. Methods and Findings: Using a pre-post and one-year repeated measures design we evaluated a 17-month interprofessional education program (Body and Self-Esteem) comprising a national cohort of participants (n = 845) enrolled from 1998 to 2010. The purpose of the program is to raise health professionals’ 1) knowledge, 2) confidence, 3) clinical competence, and 4) to promote an understanding of how patient care can be organized in an interdisciplinary fashion. The program format consists of five to six one- to three-day seminars with plenary lectures, and four to six closed network groups. The detected changes in all four outcomes were unrelated to program-irrelevant covariates. Program satisfaction was high, and on par with initial expectations. Conclusions: Limited by the fact that a randomized controlled design was impossible to use, a reasonable conclusion is that the program may have provided both immediate and longer-term benefits