Social, Medical and Dental components of Integrated pediatric care (45) - Interprofessional Education Experience: Describing educational offerings when students from two or more professions learn about, from, and with each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes

Abstract

Background: Despite changes brought by the use of new technologies and models of reimbursement and care, one of the greatest impacts on healthcare improvement rests in the healthcare team. The focus on interprofessional collaborative practice is seen as the way to improve the healthcare of individuals and communities, reducing costs and increasing value. In light of this, we still face the challenge of having most of our health professionals trained to demonstrate the skills and competencies specific to their own profession. To address this gap, health profession educators are preparing students to demonstrate skills and competencies both professionally and interprofessionally through interprofessional practice and education (IPE). Even though students are gaining the educational background necessary to work in teams, there is an urge to provide them with experiential activities in order to assure their readiness to apply the learned concepts and practice to shape the future of the healthcare system. The present experiential project aims to have students from the dental, social work, and medical schools work together as an interprofessional team with a pediatric patient currently receiving care at the UM Dental Pediatric Clinic. After evaluating the patient’s medical, social and dental needs, students will create a “comprehensive treatment plan” , which will be presented to the patient/family/guardian. With this interprofessional and person-centered approach it is expected that students will be able to recognize the importance of working in teams to improve patient’s outcomes.

Actions, Methods or Intervention: The students will practice this by engaging in four 30-minute group-learning sessions (via Zoom) and two patient/family encounters (hybrid). Sessions will be facilitated by medical, dental, and social work preceptors, and a Canvas course will be created to provide support material for the students. As a team, students will be assigned a pediatric patient, review the patients’ forms, identify problems and barriers, and establish objectives to address the problems identified. They will learn how to develop an Interprofessional mindset to identify, practice, and apply areas of collaboration using IPE skills/competencies such as “Roles and responsibilities” and “Values and Ethics”. “Communication” and “Teamwork” will be secondary competencies. Their final product will be the creation of a customized “dental, medical and social” treatment plan to present to the patient/ family member/guardian. Learning outcomes and IPE background will be measured by using the Jefferson tool, students’ surveys (pre- and post-activity), as well as a post activity patient satisfaction survey.

Results: The anticipated results for this ongoing project include students learning outcomes and patient outcomes. Students’ outcomes include: 1) Improving IPE collaboration skills by knowing better the “Roles and Responsibilities” of each profession involved in the project (Dentistry, Medicine and Social Work). 2) Improving knowledge and practicing “Values and Ethics” concepts by interacting with a real patient and playing an active role as a member of a healthcare team; 3) Improving communication and teamwork are secondary outcomes that will also be assessed during the project. These outcomes will be assessed by: 1) Pre-survey: assessing students’ IPE background; 2) use of the Jefferson Tool: preceptors will evaluate student’s ability to work as a team using the Jefferson tool; 3) Post-survey/Reflection: assessing conceptual changes on IPE concepts after the activity and learning experience. Feedback about the activity and gains in terms of teamwork and communication skills will be encouraged during the last session, which includes a case presentation and discussion. Patient outcomes will also be considered to demonstrate the impact of the project not only on the students’ learning experiences but also on the patient’s benefits. Patient outcomes include: 1) Receiving IPE education, tailored and customized personcentered treatment plan including social, dental, and medical needs, and goals to improve dental, mental, and overall health. These benefits will be assessed by a satisfaction survey filled out by the family member/caregiver during the last encounter. Long-term assessment will be carried out after the activity by following the metrics presented by the patient, demonstrating that goals have been achieved (better compliance, attendance to appointments, number of procedures dental/medical accomplished, social needs better addressed, impact on case prognosis).

Lessons Learned: We learned that developing a robust experiential IPE project requires much careful planning to ensure that the activity is meaningful and achievable. Coordination and communication among the various health professions can be challenging as schedules at the various schools do not always align. As this project is ongoing, we will continue to use the results from the pilot to improve our final course. We hope this project can be offered as an elective course through “Pathways” at the School of Dentistry and continually bridge and expand the application and practice of IPE/IPCP.

Future Application and Next Steps: The next step of this project will be running the pilot, involving one or two groups of students to make sure the length, content and flow of the sessions are sufficient, contact with patients and family members/caregivers are feasible and meaningful, and the outcomes are mostly achievable. We expect that, in the near future, more experiential learning opportunities may be offered to students in health professional courses, and we hope this project will be expanded to different clinics of the School of Dentistry to contribute to student learning experience and improved patient outcomes.