Presentations and Publications | Interprofessional Education

IPE Presentations and Publications

The Rural and Underserved Services Track (TRUST): A Novel Student-Faculty-Patient-Community Collaboration to Train the Next Generation of Health Care Providers

The Rural and Underserved Services Track (TRUST) is a two year student-engaged program and curriculum, composed of pharmacy, social work, medical, and nursing students from Binghamton University and SUNY Upstate Medical University. Students participate in ten service learning activities, alongside eight learning retreats where students, healthcare professionals, patients, and faculty collaborate to address the needs of marginalized patient populations. The overall purpose of this program is to train students (TRUST Scholars) to have the skills to provide compassionate healthcare to unique patient populations via effective interprofessional teamwork.

The goal of this Lightning Talk is to share our model curriculum and learning outcomes. Assessments and reflections are collected from students at multiple points throughout the TRUST program; assessments are collected from Scholars at three time points throughout the program and post-retreat reflections are collected from Scholars at the end of each retreat, with our talk focusing on the latter. Each learning retreat follows a general format consisting of a pre-retreat assignment, retreat introduction, panel discussion, clinical skill and case study. Four-hundred and seventy-eight quotes were retrospectively analyzed from student post-retreat reflections and ascribed to the components of the TRUST program and TRUST learning objectives. Quotes were most often ascribed to the panel discussions (25.5%) or the retreat as a whole (38.3%). Overall, only 279 (58.4%) quotes were ascribed to TRUST learning objectives, with “interprofessional team” (22.5%), “ethics and cultural sensitivity” (26.5%), “barriers to care” (17.1%), and “current and emerging health issues” (19.0%) occurring the most frequently. These areas were likely the most impactful for students and represent potential for impacting various components of the Quadruple Aim. This novel interprofessional program has had positive outcomes for students, faculty, and the community, with potential for dissemination across varied IPE settings.

Kristen Mooney, PT, DPT, NCS, Director of Clinical Education, Clinical Assistant Professor, Doctor of Physical Therapy Division, Binghamton University was an invited speaker in the LOUD Crowd session of 9/19/22, which coincided with Falls Prevention Week 2022. Dr. Mooney discussed the importance of fall prevention, techniques to prevent falls, and instructions on how to maintain safety during day-to-day activities. The group members were enthusiastic and asked many questions

Impact of an interprofessional community-engaged poverty module on key learning outcomes: A qualitative analysis of student reflections

Poverty is a social determinant of health (SDOH) that interprofessional health care teams are trained to address; yet, students in these educational programs may have limited experience with poverty and its impact on patient and community engagement, care, and outcomes. To address how integral poverty is to addressing health outcomes, Binghamton University students from nursing, pharmacy, public health, and social work participated in a class-embedded poverty module and simulation, which included asynchronous readings and videos, a poverty simulation activity, and a panel of community advocates with lived experiences of poverty, discussing poverty’s impact on health behaviors and outcomes. These latter two experiences were in-person prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (2019) and virtual during the pandemic (2020, 2021). This lightning talk will describe themes identified in the qualitative analysis of student written reflection papers. A sample of papers (n=48/610) were randomly selected utilizing a random number generator. Two co-authors conducted an iterative open and thematic coding process to develop and refine the codebook. After ten interviews were coded and an agreement level greater than 75% was met, both authors independently coded the remaining 38 interviews using the consensus codebook. Students across the four disciplines noted that their core learnings included a better understanding of the “competing needs” a person faces while in poverty. The importance of assessing and addressing SDOH was central to how students anticipated utilizing this material in their future approach to patient-centered care and communication. Students also cited community members’ first-hand experiences of poverty and its wide-reaching impact (e.g. transportation, food insecurity) as having an influence on their learning. This analysis supports that community-engaged interprofessional education may be central to students’ learning about poverty as an SDOH and their understanding of how they can contribute to the interprofessional practice with patients in the future.

Integrating disability-related content into the interprofessional education curriculum: Opportunities & lessons learned

Healthy People 2020 recommended the expansion of disability training opportunities for health practitioners to increase awareness of the social determinants of health and improve health equity for people with disabilities. Yet, many professional degree programs face significant challenges integrating this content within their already overextended curriculums (Smith et al., 2020). Interprofessional education provides a unique opportunity to support workforce development in this priority area, allowing students to learn together to improve care (Moran et al., 2020; Weber et al., 2020).

A case study activity utilized during large-scale interprofessional education events involving students from nursing, pharmacy, public health, and social work (AY19-20, N&#3f240; AY20-21, N&#3f237; AY21-22, N&#3f221) will be described. Interprofessional teams received a hypothetical case involving an individual who was experiencing a physical disability, a sensory impairment, and Social Anxiety Disorder. Drawing upon the social model of disability (Oliver, 2013), teams identified features of the environment that posed barriers to access for the individual. Drawing upon the principles of disability justice (Berne et al., 2018), teams brainstormed strategies they would use to create an equitable environment for the individual.

Students correctly identify barriers within the social environment 70.5% of the time, although a notable number of teams seemingly ascribing to a medical model that situated the disability in the person rather than the environment. Teams did, however, identify some innovative ideas for creating an inclusive experience for the individual, including utilizing technology to remove barriers.

The Rural and Underserved Services Track (TRUST): A novel student-faculty-patient-community collaboration to train the next generation of health care providers

Adapting interprofessional simulations during rapid and planned disruptions: Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic

Learning disruptions are increasingly common in higher education. From the COVID-19 pandemic emerged enduring lessons about how to effectively utilize technology to facilitate interprofessional (IP) learning and support mastery of the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) core competencies. Instructional delivery changes necessitated by the pandemic required a team of Binghamton University IP faculty to adapt an in-person poverty simulation for nursing, pharmacy, public health, and social work students. This lightning talk will describe lessons learned during periods of rapid and planned disruption to ensure IP students continued to learn about, from, and with each other.

In Spring 2018 and Spring 2019, 345 professional students collaborated during face-to-face poverty simulations facilitated by a community partner, reflecting upon the social determinants of health and subsequent health inequities. However, approximately 10 days prior to the first Spring 2020 simulation, the pandemic necessitated a rapid redesign for online instruction, including development of an asynchronous learning module with an online simulation and local documentary. IP faculty applied a backward design approach to achieve the same core competencies and learning objectives in the original course syllabus for 240 students. Using a similar approach to Spring 2020, IP faculty redesigned learning activities for Spring 2021 over several months to include an updated asynchronous learning module and an interactive synchronous Zoom session where 237 students were educated about the root causes of hunger by community members who were trained to share their own lived experiences of poverty. Breakout sessions were utilized to allow IP groups of students to reflect upon this experience and engage with community members.

Student outcome (i.e. composite grades; standardized rubric scores) and evaluation data (i.e. scaled measures; open-ended questions) were collected. Findings suggest the efficacy and replicability of a hybrid instructional model that utilizes community partnerships.