Transitioning from Classroom to Practice: A Para-clinical Interprofessional Education Pilot
Poster Description:
Background: While critical to improving learning and health care outcomes, large-scale clinical interprofessional education (IPE) within authentic clinical learning environments (CLEs) remains challenging. As a bridge to transition from preclinical to clinical IPE at a large academic health center, our team designed and piloted a self-guided, para-clinical IPE experience that will allow hundreds of interprofessional student groups to apply IPEC-derived teamwork concepts learned together to their individual experiences within CLEs. Results from this initial para-clinical IPE pilot, completed in spring 2023, are informing university-wide implementation to over 900 students planned for academic year 2023-2024.
Design: Our interprofessional team, building upon prior large-scale preclinical IPE efforts at our university (e.g., synchronous online classroom- and simulation-based IPE), designed a para-clinical IPE experience consisting of two synchronous online modules addressing patient safety, learner shame, and domains of the CLE. Modules were designed to be completed sequentially by interprofessional groups of 3-4 students during the clinical phase of each student’s professional program. Groups first met to work through steps of a simulated root cause analysis, examine patient safety and learner shame through an illustrated case study, and explore the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Clinical Microsystem Assessment tool. After applying the IHI tool independently to their own CLEs, groups met again to share observations, debrief experiences, and explore faculty perspectives on clinical IPE.
Results: We piloted our para-clinical IPE experience with 16 students representing 9 health professions. Eight students completed all post-module surveys yielding a 50% response rate. Pilot evaluation consisted of post-module and overall experience feedback including a 27-item survey using a 5-point Likert scale with several open-ended questions. Mean scores ranged from 4.11 to 4.67. Students reported that the experience was beneficial to their professional development (4.50, SD 0.71), prepared them for future clinical activities (4.63, SD 0.48), and strengthened their appreciation for the importance of individual and team performance (4.83, SD 0.86) and diverse points of view (4.50, SD 0.71). Written comments highlighted opportunities to strengthen logistical and technological aspects of the experience.
Conclusion and Reflections: Our pilot demonstrated the feasibility of implementing a self-guided, para-clinical IPE experience at a large academic health center as a mechanism to bridge preclinical to clinical IPE. Temporally situating clinical IPE-relevant activities within students’ individual CLEs to help them prepare for interprofessional clinical teamwork holds promise as a critical step to support students’ transitions from classroom- to practice-based IPE.
