Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) Simulation: Planning for coordinated care visits in primary care through interprofessional education

Interprofessional collaborative practice is key to providing health care that is safe, high quality, accessible, and patient-centered. To achieve this goal, health professions students must have the opportunity to develop core competencies, as identified by the Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel (IPEC), to be effective members of health care teams. An important part of this development is the opportunity to practice skills with members of other health care professions.

A simulation case was developed to engage a team of interprofessional primary care providers in shared patient-centered problem solving. Goals include improving interprofessional team competencies, engaging learners in shared-problem solving for chronic disease management and transitional care, and introducing learners to methods for collaborative practice (team huddles, patient-centered coordinated care visits) in the Primary Care Medical Home.

The target audience is students and/or professionals in DNP, MD, PA, and PharmD programs with an emphasis on primary care practice.  The setting is a simulated team huddle at the beginning of the primary care clinic day to plan a patient-centered coordinated care visit for a patient with uncontrolled diabetes recently discharged from the hospital. The team works together to share information and design an action plan for the patient’s visit. Each participant is given information unique to their role on the health care team. Their task is to reach consensus about priorities for the visit, work to be completed prior to and during the visit, and plans for communication.

Post-scenario debriefing includes discussion of the team process and how development of good communication and teamwork skills benefit primary health care.  A post-simulation evaluation is completed by participants and facilitators to assess impact on attitudes and awareness of interprofessional communication. The simulation exercise has been implemented with first year DNP students and third year PharmD students. The majority of students responded positively to the simulation and learned the value of interprofessional team training and its relevance to future practice in planning for effective patient care.

Project  supported by funds from: Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) under grant number D09HP25029, Technology Enhanced Interprofessional Education for Advanced Practice Students.