Health Colleges Come Together for Interprofessional Education Event

The four colleges of UC’s Academic Health Center hosted an inaugural interprofessional education event Saturday, March 29. The half-day session on error disclosures included approximately 100 students—25 from each of the four health colleges—and was a pilot session for a scaled-up version the Interprofessional Education Steering Committee hopes to present in the fall.

The next event, being planned for October, will include as many as 400 Academic Health Center students, says steering committee member Suzanne Perraud, PhD, senior associate dean for academic affairs at the UC College of Nursing.

For the pilot session, Terry Beery, PhD, professor in the UC College of Nursing and director of the Institute for Clinical Inquiry at UC Medical Center, offered a keynote address on error disclosure. Students were then broken into interprofessional groups where they worked with faculty facilitators from across the four health colleges to develop error disclosure messaging.

Frank Baker, a master’s student in the School of Social Work within the College of Allied Health Sciences, attended the March 29 session and said he really enjoyed the training and got the sense he wasn’t alone.

"It was a unique experience being able to work together as an interdisciplinary team toward a task that is very difficult,” Baker said.

The students first learned a structured methodology—steps to take in an instance where a medical error has occurred. They then put the steps into practice.

"By breaking into groups that contained members from across the health care field and applying those steps, we were able to practice disclosing medical errors in a way that respected patients and their families, while also taking responsibility for the error as a team,” Baker added, saying that the event taught him about more than error disclosure.

"We learned how to effectively communicate as a team made up of many disciplines, how to demonstrate compassion to patients and families while also providing critical information, and how to use forward thinking to ensure that future errors are less likely to happen.

"Working together across disciplines provides everyone with a source of knowledge that might have been unavailable otherwise,” Baker added. 

Michelle Robosky, a PharmD student in the James L. Winkle College of Pharmacy, said she benefited from seeing how other professions work through problems. 

Most valuable to her, Robosky said, was discussion about the importance of meeting as a team to go over the situation and formulate a game plan.

Her takeaway: "The best way to understand how someone from another profession views a situation is to have a conversation and ask, without being defensive.”

Interprofessional Education, often called IPE, has become a priority of the UC Academic Health Center. In recognition of the importance of interprofessional and interdisciplinary education, the Academic Health Center last year named Kelly Lyle as health affairs program officer. Lyle is responsible for establishing linkages between the four health colleges, specifically around the topic of interprofessional education.

Already, the colleges are working closely together through the local chapter of Open School for Health Professions. Through this program, faculty mentors and Academic Health Center students work at St. Vincent de Paul to operate a free self-management clinic for underserved patients.

An interprofessional orientation for Academic Health Center students, tentatively scheduled for Aug. 20, 2014, is also being planned.

More than 40 faculty members from the colleges of allied health sciences, medicine, nursing and pharmacy participated in the March 29 session. Members of the session’s planning committee included Lyle and Jill Boone, PharmD, pharmacy; Tiffiny Diers, MD, medicine; Gideon Labiner, allied health sciences; Rebecca Lee, PhD, nursing; and Barbara Speer from continuous professional development.

The Academic Health Center’s Interprofessional Education Steering Committee comprises Rose Smith, DPT, and Tina Whalen, EdD, DPT, allied health sciences; Diers and Andrew Filak, MD, medicine; Perraud and Yvette Pryse, PhD, nursing; and Shauna Buring, PharmD, and Brad Hein, PharmD, pharmacy.

For more information about interprofessional education activities, contact Lyle at 513-558-7424 or kelly.lyle@uc.edu.