Horizontal Integration of Interprofessional Competencies into Healthcare and Non-Healthcare Undergraduate Curricula: The Power of Partnerships

Hooks, J. Dwayne

Evidence exists that the provision of healthcare services in U.S. hospitals could be enhanced. The Institute of Medicine’s (1999) report, “To Err is Human”, identified that preventable healthcare errors resulted in 44,000 to 98,000 patient deaths per year in U.S. hospitals. The Institute of Healthcare Improvement suggest that there are millions of occurrences of harm in hospitals that cause physical and emotional suffering for patients every year. To address this issue, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement developed a program that enrolled hospitals across the country to work on 12 key strategies in an effort to prevent five million cases of harm to hospitalized patients. More than 4000 hospitals participated in this campaign. A common theme within these key strategies emerged revealing the importance of coordination and communication about patient care needs. The Joint Commission (2012) revealed that miscommunication between care providers during the transfer of patients from one setting to another accounted for 80% of serious medical error. An important strategy to enhance hospital care quality is to revolutionize the education of healthcare providers and administrators to encompass interprofessional core competencies, specifically teamwork and quality improvement techniques (Walrath et al., 2006).

While progress has been made in improving the quality of care provided to hospitalized patients, this progress has been slow (Parry, Cline & Goldman, 2012) and more work is needed. In addition to quality issues noted in hospitals, ambulatory care services could also be enhanced. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is providing access to millions of individuals who were previously unable to effectively use primary healthcare services. The increase in the number of individuals with insurance coverage, an aging population, patients presenting with multiple chronic conditions, and a shortage of primary healthcare providers will certainly influence the quality of services that will be able to be provided. This changing landscape of health care delivery, revisions to healthcare payment methodologies, and the increasing accountability of healthcare providers for delivering an enhanced healthcare product are necessitating a rethinking of health profession education. One approach to addressing the quality concern is enhancing interprofessional collaboration and decreasing the hierarchical differences between members of the healthcare team. In order to improve interprofessional collaboration, educating various members of the healthcare team in a different manner is required.

Interprofessional education, one precursor to interprofessional collaboration, is a teaching strategy that is getting more attention. More commonly than in the past, health professions students such as medical students, dental students, pharmacy students and nursing students, just to name a few, are beginning to learn together in academic settings. Healthcare systems are beginning to increase interprofessional collaboration amongst healthcare providers from different professional backgrounds. Academic practice partnerships connecting academicians and healthcare providers are an effective strategy to ensuring that students are taught interprofessional core competencies of roles and responsibilities, values and ethics, interprofessional communication, and teams and teamwork (IPEC, 2011) and then seeing these competencies in action. Interprofessional education allows the opportunity for students to learn about and utilize skills that enhance communication and collaboration skills (Institute of Medicine, 2013). Despite the benefits of interprofessional core competencies integration, the literature pertaining to interprofessional education (IPE) and interprofessional practice (IPP) is relatively in its infancy. While IPE curricula are on the rise (Thibault, 2012), the need exists for additional guidance regarding how to structure and develop IPE programs.

Educators at a large liberal arts university in the southeastern part of the United States believed that expanding interprofessional education to those enrolled in the health professions, as well as students who were seeking non-health professions degrees, was of benefit. A ten step interprofessional curriculum development model (Nanda & Scott, XXXX) was utilized to develop an undergraduate elective course that was open to healthcare and non-healthcare professions students. The course was designed to provide students with an opportunity to develop skills needed for interprofessional practice. The course provided an introductory framework that helps students develop and employ strategies and techniques needed to improve the effectiveness of interdisciplinary teams in healthcare and non-healthcare settings with a focus on the four interprofessional core competencies (IPEC, 2011). Students will understand the resources needed to address complex problems within the U.S. healthcare system and will demonstrate understanding of the importance of how individuals from different professional backgrounds learn and work together to achieve desirable outcomes.

The following course objectives were collaboratively developed by the faculty members. At the conclusion of the course, students will be able to:

Apply the concepts and principles of interprofessional collaboration to case studies, simulation and field experiences.
Compare and contrast the roles and related skills of professionals engaged in interprofessional teams.
Describe the process of team development and the roles and practices of effective teams in healthcare and non-healthcare settings.
Identify the characteristics of effective communication, as well as barriers to effective communication, among interprofessional team members.
Identify the ethical responsibilities of each member of the interprofessional team.
Analyze conflict management strategies that are important to the success of the interprofessional team.

This presentation will describe how a College of Health and Human Services faculty incorporated key recommendations from the IPE/IPP literature to design, develop, and implement an IPE course to undergraduate students at a large university. The course was designed to evaluate the impact of the structured approach on attitude related to team structure, impact of leadership, situational monitoring, mutual support, and communication. Best practice models of interprofessional education (Bridges, Davidson, Odegard, Maki & Tomkowiak, 2011) were considered in the development of this undergraduate course

The purpose of this presentation is to share information about the development and horizontal integration of interprofessional core competencies into an elective course for undergraduate healthcare and non-healthcare professions students at a large liberal arts university in the southeastern part of the United States. Further, this presentation will provide the steps that were taken to generate faculty interest, develop the interprofessional infrastructure including course content, the interprofessional education of involved faculty, the division of course responsibilities for faculty, the creation of the pedagogical model, the incorporation of healthcare provider representatives from a large healthcare system, the identification of field experience/clinical sites for students, the marketing of the course to potential students, the development of simulation activities, and evaluation of progress. Results of the review of qualitative data from faculty reflections will be shared. These results suggest the transition of the faculty team from a multidisciplinary group into a high functioning interprofessional team. Results from the administration of the TeamSTEPPS Teamwork Attitudes Questionnaire (T-TAQ) to students will also be discussed. The horizontal integration of interprofessional competencies for healthcare and non-healthcare professions students makes this work unique and innovative.