Integrating Interprofessional Education in an On-line Clinical Course

Interprofessional collaborative practice is reported to be key to safe, high quality, accessible and patient centered health care, but students require opportunities to practice effective teamwork and team-based care. The Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice (2011) were used as a framework for the development of a web-based required interprofessional assignment for FNP and Pharm D students taking the final clinical didactic course in their respective curricula. Student teams comprised of 4-5 FNP and 4-5 Pharm D students were assigned a complex case study describing a medication error relevant to primary health care that could have been prevented at multiple levels. Cases include Coumadin dosing, polypharmacy, medication interaction, asthma management, insulin dose confusion, and look-alike-sound alike drugs prescribed via an electronic health record. Student teams are required to complete and present a root cause analysis of the error and are required to use technology to demonstrate appropriate interprofessional communication related to the error. Students are provided with multiple resources, including faculty-developed videos demonstrating bad communication and good communication related to medication prescribing and error prevention and a video on root cause analysis. At completion of the assignment, all students evaluated their teams and also evaluated the experience using a Likert scale form based on achievement of the 4 competency domains (Values/ethics for interprofessional practice, Roles/Responsibilities, Interprofessional communication, and Teams/teamwork). Efforts are underway to expand this assignment to nursing students in other advanced practice tracks and to other health professional students.