Large-scale team-based learning for interprofessional education in medical and health sciences

Dear Sir

We read with interest the paper published by Parmelee & Hudes (2012) concisely describing team-based learning (TBL) with special emphasis on its importance and relevance in healthcare education.

Fujita Health University (FHU) is a general medical university comprising two departments: the School of Medicine, which includes one faculty, and the School of Health Sciences, which includes six faculties. With all the health professional students studying together on the same site, FHU has a great locational advantage for interprofessional education (IPE), which has recently been promoted, particularly in medical and health sciences undergraduate programs.

Aiming to give the students an additional opportunity to solve clinical case problems in a multidisciplinary setting, we implemented a large-scale TBL program in an IPE class for all the 4th year health professional students from seven faculties. On 25 October and 1 November in 2013, for 3 hours each day, we conducted the TBL program using course materials titled “Home Health Care of a Stroke Patient”, which were created by the subject selection committee for this program. We formed 92 teams of 5 or 6 students in total and separated them into 5 classrooms; the largest class contained 150 students (25 teams). Then synchronized TBL sessions were conducted by 2 to 3 instructors per classroom. At the end of the program, we requested the students to give peer assessments of teammates’ contributions to their teams. The differences in contribution scores among faculties were clear.

As a result, within the limited number of the faculty resources, TBL was found to be the best solution in large classes where a large number of multidisciplinary students can learn how to solve clinical case problems while working in groups.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.