Innovative Approaches to Interprofessional Simulation

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing has published the Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice.  These competencies encourage students to deliberatively work together in order to ensure safe patient care delivery.  The educational setting is the liaison between student learning and practice.  Simulation is frequently used in the educational setting, and can be utilized for interprofessional education as well.  This presentation will describe three innovative simulated activities with nurse practitioner (NP) students from the Pediatric acute, Adult-Gerontology, and Primary Care programs at a private Midwestern university. All three activities focused on interprofessional collaboration with patients across the lifespan.  The first activity emphasized field triage, patient stabilization, communication, and transfer of care of patients using a pre-hospital and emergency department simulation between emergency medical services and NP students.  Two months later, the activity continued with the same students, in which they participated in a large-scale community disaster drill.  The second simulation activity focused on patient safety including communication, medication management, and transfer of care with NP and pharmacy students.  Simulated patients presented to the primary care setting and required transfer to an acute care facility and/or assistance with medication management utilizing the pharmacy students. This was a formative evaluation.  The third activity simulated a primary care clinic setting with students managing multiple patients while utilizing interprofessional resources.  This activity was a summative evaluation for NP students in their residency.  Through all of these simulated activities, students experienced interprofessional collaboration within a safe environment.  In post simulation debriefings, students from all professions expressed satisfaction and increased awareness of the importance of collaboration and communication to assure patient safety within the healthcare system.