Engaging and Empowering Patients and Caregivers as Co-teachers in the Development and Delivery of UW CIPE Telehealth Healthy Aging Initiative

Seminar Description: 
Learning Objectives:
1. Identify components and strategies to develop an IPE Telehealth program.
2. Increase awareness around ways to engage and empower patients and caregivers as co-teachers in IPE curriculum development.
3. Describe key characteristics of an effective interprofessional healthy aging education to prepare health profession students to work collaboratively with aging adults.
4. Explore pre-post evaluation methods to evaluate students’ interprofessional learnings.

Descriptions:
There are growing evidence in the literature demonstrating the meaningful impact of engaging patients and caregivers in educational curriculum development and delivery on students learning. Interprofessional care is different from multidisciplinary care, interdisciplinary care, and transdisciplinary care. Therefore, the ways in which students learn with, from and about other professions must be integrated and collaborative. This session will use the topic of dementia as a means to demonstrate modes of interprofessional learning as a way to facilitate collaborative care in the clinical environment. With the growing aging population in the US and globally, the number of people living with dementia (PLwD) is increasing dramatically. Current evidence shows that healthcare professionals’ collaboration is often undermined by a lack of understanding about each profession’s scope of practices.

The Interprofessional Practice and Education Healthy Aging Initiative (IPE-HAI) at the UW Madison Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education was developed as a place for students from multiple professions to come together to learn with, from and about each other in becoming competent interprofessional practitioners and leaders to work with aging population. The IPE HAI currently consists of the Advanced Dementia Interprofessional Clinical Simulation (ADICS) and the Telehealth Interprofessional Dementia Caregiving Badge (TIDCB) Initiative. The overall goals of the ADICS 6-hour Mini-Course include helping students to improve their interprofessional team-based care competencies (IPEC, 2016), to promote a client/patient-centered approach, and to apply professional knowledge. The course includes a series of four units (two online units and two simulation units). The TIDCB goal is to implement an Interprofessional Practice Learning Badge Initiative to educate health profession students to learn and work collaboratively with people living with dementia and their caregivers. TIDCB is a 12-hour experience, over a semester, in which student teams from across professions interact with dementia care specialists, caregivers of people living with dementia, and representatives from Aging and Disability Resource Centers (all as co-teachers) to create a customized resource packet as a capstone project for the caregiver. The evaluation of the UW IPE-HAI has shown that students’ knowledge, skills, and perspectives towards interprofessional dementia care are significantly improving.

This education session will explore the development, implementation, and evaluation of ADICS and the IPL Dementia Caregiving Badge through audience participation. In doing so, this session will engage attendees in small and large group discussions to discuss ways in which to build the infrastructure, partnerships, and content for an interprofessional program in which patients and caregivers are the co-teachers. Attendees will leave with tools to identify components of an IPE experiential session and ways to engage and empower patients and caregivers as co-teachers in IPE curriculum development.