How interprofessional teams of students mobilized collaborative practice competencies and the patient partnership approach in a hybrid IPE course

ABSTRACT

To develop collaborative competencies of future health and social services professionals, the Université de Montréal (UdeM) offers interprofessional education (IPE) in partnership with patients. To meet the challenges of IPE, UdeM turned to digital tools to enable interprofessional teams of students to collaborate online and face-to-face. The collaborative flipped classroom for IPE with patient partnership is the conceptual framework for the pedagogical method used for this study. It is based on: 1) a competency framework and 2) collaborative learning concept and dimensions. The study aimed to: 1) demonstrate how interprofessional teams of students mobilize framework competencies and care approaches during online and face-to-face collaborative learning activities; and 2) analyze how students collaborate during a hybrid IPE course using a patient partnership approach. Using a qualitative methodology, the contents of the online collaborative journals (OCJs) of 12 interprofessional student teams were analyzed, along with the individual comments (n = 994) of IPE course learners collected through the Interprofessional Team Collaboration questionnaire (n = 321). The results suggest that the course under study enabled teams to collaborate online and face-to-face throughout the term, and indicate that students were better prepared to adopt a patient partnership approach.

KEYWORDS:

• Interprofessional education
• patient partnership
• hybrid learning
• collaborative learning
• collaborative practice competencies
• flipped classroom

Acknowledgments

First author Audrey Raynault wishes to dedicate this article in memory of Luce Gosselin who taught her everything about patient partnership and who left us in October 2017. The authors wish to thank the Comité Interfacultaire Opérationnel de l’UdeM for funding the translation costs for this article by Donna Riley. Thanks also to the Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Société et Culture (FRQSC) for the doctoral scholarship provided to Audrey Raynault.

Declaration of interest

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