Ensuring Inclusivity of All Health Professionals Through Purposeful Development of a Holistic Case

Seminar Description: Interprofessional education (IPE) activities traditionally encompass learners from related professions within a single institution, such as medicine, nursing, or pharmacy. It is less common for IPE activities to include diverse health and social care professions from multiple institutions to collaboratively engage with and learn from each other. During this seminar, we will share how our interprofessional faculty team developed, implemented, assessed, and refined two virtual IPE sessions that have trained 1,500+ health profession students since 2020 to provide team-based care to a patient with chronic pain and substance misuse.

The seminar will address our approach to:
1. Recruiting students from seven institutions across Washington and Idaho, including medicine, nursing, pharmacy, nutrition, athletic training, physician assistant, physical therapy, paramedic, social work, and addiction studies programs;
2. Developing and refining a longitudinal patient case at the core of the IPE activities that purposefully includes and highlights the roles and responsibilities of all participating professions in providing collaborative, holistic care;
3. Incorporating standardized patient interactions into the student-led activities to simulate meaningful inclusion of the patient perspective and the importance of shared decision-making;
4. Fostering professional identity of each profession while dismantling perceived hierarchical relationships between professions that have existed historically; and
5. Developing manageable learner-centered pre-session materials to facilitate strong baseline knowledge for all participants, despite inherent differences in degree-program background.

The seminar will address the summit theme of “The Classroom and Beyond: Preparing Students for Collaborative Practice” by providing participants with potential strategies to enhance the diversity of health and social care professions in IPE activities at their institutions while also ensuring purposeful inclusion of all professions and discipline-specific perspectives.

After attending this seminar, the learner will be able to:
1. Reflect on and discuss the benefits and challenges of combining a multitude of health and social care students within an IPE activity.
2. Describe one interdisciplinary teams’ approach for developing, modifying, assessing, and evaluating an inclusive interprofessional education activity.
3. Apply a health equity lens in data analysis to identify differences in IP learner experiences and make targeted improvements from year to year.
4. Brainstorm strategies and develop an action plan to ensure inclusivity of professions, including health and social care, into their interprofessional education learning opportunities.

As part of the seminar, participants will reflect on and discuss the value of including diverse learners in IPE activities and the challenges that can limit incorporation of multiple professions/institutions. Participants will share their lessons learned and create a personalized action plan to enhance inclusivity of professions, including health and social care, into their interprofessional learning activities. The seminar will utilize various active learning approaches, including self-reflection, audience response polls, and small and large group discussions.

The seminar will address the following conference priority criteria:
1. Our approach to increase health equity by expanding curricula to include diverse learners.
2. Our strategies to purposefully incorporate the patient perspective into the standardized patient case and activity.
3. Our approach to measuring learning outcomes across the two-part IPE series.