Evaluation of a newly developed flipped-classroom course on interprofessional practice in health care for medical students

ABSTRACT

Interprofessional education is expected to promote collaborative practice and should therefore be included in health professionals’ curricula. Reports on interprofessional curricular development and its evaluation are rare. We therefore undertook a comprehensive quantitative and qualitative evaluation of a new, mandatory course on interprofessional collaboration for medical students during their third year of the Bachelor of Medicine study programme. The newly developed and implemented course spans over six weeks and was designed in a hybrid, flipped-classroom format. It incorporates experience- and case-based learning as well as interactions with other health professionals. Each student completes an eLearning and a clinical workshadowing individually before attending the – due to the pandemic – virtual live lectures. To assess quality and usefulness of teaching-learning formats and course structure to learn about interprofessional collaboration and to develop interprofessional competencies and identity, a quantitative and qualitative evaluation was performed with more than 280 medical students and 26 nurse educators from teaching hospitals using online surveys (open & closed-ended format). Data were analyzed descriptively and using content analysis processes. Students appreciated the flipped-classroom concept, the real-world case-based learning scenarios with interprofessional lecturer teams, and the possibility of an experience-based learning opportunity in the clinical setting including interaction with students and professionals from other health professions. Interprofessional identity did not change during the course. Evaluation data showed that the course is a promising approach for teaching-learning interprofessional competencies to medical students. The evaluation revealed three factors that determined the success of this course, namely, a flipped-classroom concept, the individual workshadowing of medical students with another health professional, mainly nurses, and live sessions with interprofessional teaching-learning teams. The course structure and teaching-learning methods showed potential and could serve as a template for interprofessional course development in other institutions and on other course topics.

KEYWORDS:

• Interprofessional education
• interprofessional practice
• medical students
• flipped classroom
• course development

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Matthew Kerry-Kerry Krause, Heidi Bruderer Enzler and Eva Thürlimann for their assistance in data analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10872981.2023.2198177

Authors’ contributions

All authors participated in the development and implementation of the course. MR, JL, AT, RN, DB and CW developed the course-specific items for the overall course evaluation, and AT, CW and RN developed the questionnaire to evaluate the eLearning sessions and teaching hospitals’ experience. AT and MR analyzed the quantitative evaluation data. MH analyzed the EPIS data. The qualitative data from all questionnaires were analyzed by LV and RN. AT, LV, and RN co-wrote the manuscript. CW, DB, AF, EF, JL, MH, and MR critically reviewed the manuscript for important intellectual content. All authors have reviewed the drafts of the manuscript and have approved the final version.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The research has been conducted according to the national guidelines and regulations for research with humans [49]. The Cantonal Ethics Committee Zurich waived the need for ethics approval (BASEC-No Req-2021–00131). The surveys reported here were irrevocably anonymous and conducted on a voluntary basis. In accordance with Swiss regulation and ethical guidance, participants were informed that completion and return of the online survey is taken as informed consent. Therefore, there was no need for formal collection of informed consent.

Availability of data and materials

Parts of the data come from the university standardized evaluation of teaching curricula where a data sharing in an open access repository is not foreseen. Data can be provided from the corresponding author upon specific, reasonable request.