A day of dynamic Interprofessional Education (IPE) at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center brought together 175 medical, nursing, and physician assistant students, staff, and faculty from Geisel School of Medicine, Franklin Pierce University, and Colby-Sawyer College for a shared learning experience focused on enhancing collaborative, team-based patient care.
According to IPE, “interprofessional education occurs when students from two or more professions learn about, from, and with each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes. Once students understand how to work interprofessionally, they are ready to enter the workplace as a member of the collaborative practice team.”
Part of IPE, the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) has defined core competencies to guide interprofessional education and team-based care for improved outcomes across health professions to ensure healthcare professionals are proficient in providing patient-centered, community- and population-oriented, interprofessional, collaborative patient care.
As Geisel strategically advances toward integrating these educational practices, this shared day of learning reinforced the importance of these competencies in health education.
It also underscored the commitment of these schools, along with Dartmouth Health, to preparing competent health professionals who collaborate effectively, communicate clearly, and deliver safe, high-quality care.
Working in small interprofessional groups to address a complex patient scenario, students learned about IPEC’s core competencies and how to apply them.
Values/Ethics for Interprofessional Practice, engaged students in open discussions and joint problem-solving while exploring mutual respect, shared values, and patient-centered care.
Recognizing the scope and contributions of the represented professions, Roles/Responsibilities helped students to clarify their own roles and responsibilitiers and to better understand those of their team members.
Through observation and discussion of Interprofessional Communication principles, teams learned how to use the Concerned, Uncomfortable, Safety (CUS) communication tool to advocate for patient safety and express concerns clearly and respectfully within a healthcare team.
And through Teams and Teamwork, students learned how to develop coordinated care planning, leadership sharing, and decision-making skills to leverage each profession’s strengths.
The day also feaured simulation exercises that gave students a team-based opportunity to put what they learned into practice with a realistic patient scenario rife with ethical and safety challenges. Emphasizing psychological safety in team communication, students practiced assertiveness and patient advocacy using the CUS model.
Several resident physicians contributed enthusiastically to realistic simulations for our learners and interprofessional faculty guided post-activity reflections, helping students link their experience to IPEC competencies and clinical practice.
Many thanks to those who contributed their skills and expertise to this event.
Written by Terri Eastman, M.Ed, CHES, director for Integrated Curriculum and Interprofessional Education at Geisel.
