Design and implementation of an interprofessional education course for undergraduate students at the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland: the Geneva experience

Abstract

The School of Health of Geneva (SHG, part of the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland) introduced interprofessional education (IPE) in its Bachelor Programs in 2012. IPE is an approach that encourages collaboration between health care professionals, optimizing health care quality and decision-making processes. The aim of this article is to describe the implementation and evaluation of IPE at our Institution. IPE is a didactic program, comprising discussion about fictional clinical cases, simulated practice and project management, dispensed by an interdisciplinary academic team. Training is focused on communication and collaboration between students of the five health departments of our Institution and students from the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy of the Geneva University. The IPE program concerns on average 1000 future caregivers per year. Skill development resulting from IPE will be evaluated by an IPE research team via a student cross-sectional study, using the Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale (RIPLS). The results will be used for validating the French version of the RIPLS.

• Interprofessional collaboration
• interprofessional education
• interprofessional evaluation

Declaration of interest

The authors report that they have no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.