Student feedback leads to new IPE program

Interprofessional Education starts successful new program: REPS

Reflect

Engage

Practice

Summarize

The Office of Interprofessional Education hosts four major IPE events each academic year: the First Year Event at the end of August, REPS in October, Activity Day in February, and PLACES in April. These four events pillar the other interweaving IPE programming and initiatives that the IPE Office holds throughout the year. These other opportunities and programming include faculty development sessions, leadership meetings, and additional optional events and activities in which students can participate.

On August 31, 54 small, interprofessional groups of first year students logged into live escape room sessions held on the BlackBoard Collaborate platform to meet with their facilitators and solve puzzles virtually to complete the activity. Using a slide set created by the IPE Office, facilitators began with a case introduction video that oriented students to the overarching patient case that they would discuss throughout the event. By using the different puzzles and activities, the teams would eventually diagnose the patient and develop a treatment plan.

Throughout the case, student groups viewed featured videos submitted by faculty from each of the eight health sciences programs: Clinical Research, Nursing, Osteopathic Medicine, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Pharmacy Practice, Physical Therapy, Physician Assistant Practice, and Public Health. This allowed the first-year students to learn more about each of these respective professions while learning more about working with one another across discipline lines.

While the main goal of the IPE First Year Event is to orient students to the importance of collaborating interprofessionally and to lay a foundation of interprofessional education competencies, the second IPE event held in the fall focuses more specifically on the roles and responsibilities of each profession.

This second event is known as IPE REPS, which stands for Reflect – Engage – Practice – Summarize. These are the four central components of the event. REPS was designed in response to student feedback asking for more direct instructional opportunities focusing on the roles and responsibilities of each profession.

In REPS, students start their learning by completing a pre-event survey asking them to reflect on their current understanding of each profession. They then engage with the professions by completing a virtual, self-paced module that includes educational content for each profession organized into the main themes of Education & Training, Roles & Responsibilities, Interprofessional Interactions, and Settings. By completing this module, students increase their understanding of the different roles on the collaborative interprofessional healthcare team. Then, they move on to Practice and Summarize in which they attend live online sessions that require them to apply the new concepts they have learned about earlier in the event.

The IPE Office launched the first iteration of REPS in the spring of 2020. This event, designed to be a massive in-person gathering of more than 600 students, was quickly adapted into a virtual format and student participation was largely asynchronous. However, post-event survey results indicated a strikingly significant increase in student understanding about each profession, so the event accomplished its goals.

For the next iteration of REPS, that took place October 13, the event remained 100% virtual; however, live and synchronous learning opportunities were added. The students’ agenda included completing an interactive module offline and then logging into a largegroup live session hosted by Paige Brown (’06 PharmD), assistant dean of Interprofessional Education, and Marisa Vaskalis, director of Interprofessional Education. The final step was to log into a small-group live session facilitated by one or two of the volunteer facilitators. At the time of this magazine’s printing, anecdotal feedback from students and facilitators indicate that REPS effectively met its goals and formal feedback will be reviewed soon.

The success of the first iteration of REPS became the focus of the IPE Office’s poster and lightning talk presentation submissions to the annual National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education (NEXUS) Summit. The IPE Office is always pleased to share their progress and developments with colleagues from around the country and also enjoys and greatly benefits from conversations with other IPE programs across the nation.