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A Pilot Study to Incorporate Interprofessional Education with FNP Students in an Online Program and Pharmacy Students in a Traditional Program Using a Blended Approach
Abstracts / Journal of Interprofessional Education & Practice 1 (2015) 48e77 include tools, processes and infrastructures that anchor the essential culture and practice changes that support the engagement and partnerships with patients, families and communities.
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increased need to have face-to-face interactions with health care students in order for effective interprofessional education to occur.
Conclusions Results The outcomes reported by consortium healthcare systems include improved patient and staff satisfaction, improved relationships and trust across multiple roles and disciplines, individualized and patient-centered care planning and improved clinical outcomes.
Conclusion This approach moves institutions away from a project driven approach to developing partnerships and supports sustainability of culture and practice changes. The models within the framework have been replicated in multiple settings, which prevents the need for others to re-invent them and demonstrates the framework can be used as a blue print for patient, family, and community partnerships and interprofessional collaborative practice and education. A PILOT STUDY TO INCORPORATE INTERPROFESSIONAL EDUCATION WITH FNP STUDENTS IN AN ONLINE PROGRAM AND PHARMACY STUDENTS IN A TRADITIONAL PROGRAM USING A BLENDED APPROACH Jill Cunningham DNP, FNP-BC, Cyndi Cortes DrPH, MSN, MRE, CPNP-PC.
Background The importance of interprofessional education (IPE) is recognized; however there is a dearth of literature on IPE experiences or activities for students completing graduate degrees in health care professions online. Methods Pharmacy and Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) faculty collaborated to develop an interprofessional prospective cohort study to evaluate the attitudes of the pharmacy and nurse practitioner students before and after their participation in planned IPE activities within their courses. Students had face-to-face meetings at the beginning and at the end of the study. All other interactions were conducted in an online format using the university's learning management system. During the first face-to-face meeting students were provided suggested topics of conversation and were then asked the most important and the most surprising thing they learned as a result of the IPE discussion. Each semester, assignments with relevant content that focused on the students' future professional roles, patient care, and current health care issues were developed by the faculty team. The first semester, the students explored the roles of each discipline in identifying responsibilities in anti-microbial stewardship; another assignment presented a short patient case scenario and asked students to select the best medication treatment option. The students were placed in discussion groups and were instructed to present the evidence for their selected responses. Additionally, students responded to other team members' with the rationale as to why they agreed or disagreed with the responses. Results There were 38 FNP students and 99 pharmacy students who completed both the pre study and post study surveys. Paired 2 sample t-tests of the 17 item survey were used to analyze differences in the means of students' perceptions. Significant differences were found in responses by both the FNP students and the pharmacy students. Favorable statistically significant changes include: pharmacy students showed an increased understanding of the scope of practice of both FNPs and pharmacists and also a clear understanding of the role of pharmacists and other healthcare providers. Unfavorable statistically significant changes by pharmacy students include: (a) belief that interprofessional experiences are important for health care students to experience, (b) belief that interprofessional experiences could help to improve health outcomes, (c) belief that they could learn valuable aspects about patient care by working with others from different health care professions, (d) belief that interprofessional interactions regarding patient care will be/ are relevant to me as a health care student, (e) interest in interprofessional education. FNP students responded less favorably to the belief that online interprofessional activities should be a regular part of their curriculum and reported an
Mixed results were obtained from the pilot study. Students' comments and suggestions will be considered as future IPE activities are planned. ALIGNING CARE OPTIONS: AN INTERPROFESSIONAL APPROACH TO ENGAGING AND MANAGING COMPLEX PATIENTS M. Davidson MEd, E. Painter PsyD, A. Heilman MSN, NP-C, M. Singh MD, MS.
Background Five Centers of Excellence in Primary Care Education (CoEPCE) have been established by VA Office of Academic Affiliations in Veteran's Affairs Medical Centers and are implementing and testing approaches to preparing physician, nurse practitioner, behavioral medicine learners and other associated health trainees for collaborative, patient-centered practices that provide coordinated longitudinal care in the 21st century. As two of four enterprise core competencies, (Shared Decision Making and Interprofessional Collaboration), the Cleveland Center of Excellence developed, implemented and evaluated an interprofessional case conference where multiple disciplines participate in an active discussion about challenging patients and create an action plan for care together.
Purpose Learners regularly expressed difficulty, frustration, and helplessness managing psychosocially complex patients and were seeking guidance to better serve this challenging population. The conference, named “Aligning Care Options” (ACO) was developed to serve as a forum for interprofessional discussion with concrete and realistic action planning which then can be directly implemented in clinic with the following learning objectives: 1) Identify complex patients and conceptualize problems with a patient-centered approach 2) Understand the variety of available resources and services within the VA and community 3) Enhance consideration of a patient's social resources (i.e., family and social support network) to improve engagement in care 4) Demonstrate case presentation skills 5) Develop respect of other specializations and methods of collaborating effectively 6) Identify key shared decision making (SDM) opportunities. Methods Learners present a fifty minute peer-review conference utilizing a PowerPoint presentation highlighting the history of the complex patient's case, including opportunities for SDM with faculty from General Medicine and Behavioral Medicine facilitating. Consultants from other disciplines, nursing and other clinical care team members are invited to attend and participate. During the session, the group develops a concrete action plan for next-steps and best practices for this unique patient. After the plan is implemented, progress is reported at the next session, and the group engages in additional problem-solving/brainstorming.
Findings To date, thirteen ACO conferences have occurred. Feedback reports are generated by learners and facilitators as a means of evaluation after each session. Overall feedback (4.77), usefulness (4.62), and confidence that the participant could use the skills acquired during session (4.41) are scored on a 5-point Likert scale.
Lessons Learned Written comments from learners were positive, highlighting the importance of an interprofessional group discussion with multiple perspectives focused on setting realistic expectations, specific intervention techniques,
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increased need to have face-to-face interactions with health care students in order for effective interprofessional education to occur.
Conclusions Results The outcomes reported by consortium healthcare systems include improved patient and staff satisfaction, improved relationships and trust across multiple roles and disciplines, individualized and patient-centered care planning and improved clinical outcomes.
Conclusion This approach moves institutions away from a project driven approach to developing partnerships and supports sustainability of culture and practice changes. The models within the framework have been replicated in multiple settings, which prevents the need for others to re-invent them and demonstrates the framework can be used as a blue print for patient, family, and community partnerships and interprofessional collaborative practice and education. A PILOT STUDY TO INCORPORATE INTERPROFESSIONAL EDUCATION WITH FNP STUDENTS IN AN ONLINE PROGRAM AND PHARMACY STUDENTS IN A TRADITIONAL PROGRAM USING A BLENDED APPROACH Jill Cunningham DNP, FNP-BC, Cyndi Cortes DrPH, MSN, MRE, CPNP-PC.
Background The importance of interprofessional education (IPE) is recognized; however there is a dearth of literature on IPE experiences or activities for students completing graduate degrees in health care professions online. Methods Pharmacy and Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) faculty collaborated to develop an interprofessional prospective cohort study to evaluate the attitudes of the pharmacy and nurse practitioner students before and after their participation in planned IPE activities within their courses. Students had face-to-face meetings at the beginning and at the end of the study. All other interactions were conducted in an online format using the university's learning management system. During the first face-to-face meeting students were provided suggested topics of conversation and were then asked the most important and the most surprising thing they learned as a result of the IPE discussion. Each semester, assignments with relevant content that focused on the students' future professional roles, patient care, and current health care issues were developed by the faculty team. The first semester, the students explored the roles of each discipline in identifying responsibilities in anti-microbial stewardship; another assignment presented a short patient case scenario and asked students to select the best medication treatment option. The students were placed in discussion groups and were instructed to present the evidence for their selected responses. Additionally, students responded to other team members' with the rationale as to why they agreed or disagreed with the responses. Results There were 38 FNP students and 99 pharmacy students who completed both the pre study and post study surveys. Paired 2 sample t-tests of the 17 item survey were used to analyze differences in the means of students' perceptions. Significant differences were found in responses by both the FNP students and the pharmacy students. Favorable statistically significant changes include: pharmacy students showed an increased understanding of the scope of practice of both FNPs and pharmacists and also a clear understanding of the role of pharmacists and other healthcare providers. Unfavorable statistically significant changes by pharmacy students include: (a) belief that interprofessional experiences are important for health care students to experience, (b) belief that interprofessional experiences could help to improve health outcomes, (c) belief that they could learn valuable aspects about patient care by working with others from different health care professions, (d) belief that interprofessional interactions regarding patient care will be/ are relevant to me as a health care student, (e) interest in interprofessional education. FNP students responded less favorably to the belief that online interprofessional activities should be a regular part of their curriculum and reported an
Mixed results were obtained from the pilot study. Students' comments and suggestions will be considered as future IPE activities are planned. ALIGNING CARE OPTIONS: AN INTERPROFESSIONAL APPROACH TO ENGAGING AND MANAGING COMPLEX PATIENTS M. Davidson MEd, E. Painter PsyD, A. Heilman MSN, NP-C, M. Singh MD, MS.
Background Five Centers of Excellence in Primary Care Education (CoEPCE) have been established by VA Office of Academic Affiliations in Veteran's Affairs Medical Centers and are implementing and testing approaches to preparing physician, nurse practitioner, behavioral medicine learners and other associated health trainees for collaborative, patient-centered practices that provide coordinated longitudinal care in the 21st century. As two of four enterprise core competencies, (Shared Decision Making and Interprofessional Collaboration), the Cleveland Center of Excellence developed, implemented and evaluated an interprofessional case conference where multiple disciplines participate in an active discussion about challenging patients and create an action plan for care together.
Purpose Learners regularly expressed difficulty, frustration, and helplessness managing psychosocially complex patients and were seeking guidance to better serve this challenging population. The conference, named “Aligning Care Options” (ACO) was developed to serve as a forum for interprofessional discussion with concrete and realistic action planning which then can be directly implemented in clinic with the following learning objectives: 1) Identify complex patients and conceptualize problems with a patient-centered approach 2) Understand the variety of available resources and services within the VA and community 3) Enhance consideration of a patient's social resources (i.e., family and social support network) to improve engagement in care 4) Demonstrate case presentation skills 5) Develop respect of other specializations and methods of collaborating effectively 6) Identify key shared decision making (SDM) opportunities. Methods Learners present a fifty minute peer-review conference utilizing a PowerPoint presentation highlighting the history of the complex patient's case, including opportunities for SDM with faculty from General Medicine and Behavioral Medicine facilitating. Consultants from other disciplines, nursing and other clinical care team members are invited to attend and participate. During the session, the group develops a concrete action plan for next-steps and best practices for this unique patient. After the plan is implemented, progress is reported at the next session, and the group engages in additional problem-solving/brainstorming.
Findings To date, thirteen ACO conferences have occurred. Feedback reports are generated by learners and facilitators as a means of evaluation after each session. Overall feedback (4.77), usefulness (4.62), and confidence that the participant could use the skills acquired during session (4.41) are scored on a 5-point Likert scale.
Lessons Learned Written comments from learners were positive, highlighting the importance of an interprofessional group discussion with multiple perspectives focused on setting realistic expectations, specific intervention techniques,