Assessing Interprofessional education in a student–faculty collaborative practice network

Abstract

Although interprofessional relationships are ubiquitous in clinical practice, undergraduate medical students have limited opportunities to develop these relationships in the clinical setting. A few student–faculty collaborative practice networks (SFCPNs) have been working to address this issue, but limited data exist examining the nature and extent of these practices. A systematic survey at a Harvard-affiliated SFCPN is utilised to evaluate the quantity and quality of interprofessional interactions, isolate improvements, and identify challenges in undergraduate interprofessional education (IPE). Our data corroborate previous findings in which interprofessional clinical learning was shown to have positive effects on student development and align with all four domains of Interprofessional Education Collaborative core competencies, including interprofessional ethics and values, roles and responsibilities, interprofessional communication, and teams and teamwork. These results highlight the unique opportunity and growing necessity of integrating IPE in SFCPNs to endorse the development of collaborative and professional competencies in clinical modalities of patient care.

Keywords:

• Interprofessional education
• student–faculty collaborative practice network
• medical education
• interprofessional learning
• interprofessional teamwork

Acknowledgments

We gratefully thank Sung Eun Kim, Abigail Frydryk, Katherine Shea, and Rachael Williams for their generous assistance during survey development and presentation of respondent data.