Interprofessional, learner-driven collaboration for innovative solutions to healthcare delivery in student-run clinics

ABSTRACT

Student-run clinics are settings in which learners are empowered to design service delivery. Despite shared challenges faced by these clinics in improving clinical and educational programming, information exchange and collaboration between clinics of different institutions and professions are inefficiently facilitated by existing platforms. An abridged, one-hour hackathon event was piloted at the Society of Student-Run Free Clinics’ 2018 Annual Conference. During the event, interprofessional teams were guided through defining a problem, ideating and prototyping possible solutions, and sharing them with the larger group. There were 23 participants representing 16 institutions and 5 professions; most had never discussed their clinic’s problems with members of other institutions before. Teams generated novel ideas that culminated from a combination of existing local best practices or focused on developing infrastructure between clinics. Feedback of the event was positive; participants felt confident to design and implement solutions and collaborate with other clinics after the event. The abridged hackathon shows promise to facilitate communication and innovation among diverse groups across institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Hackathon
• systems-based practice
• interprofessional education
• practice improvement
• design thinking

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the 2018 Society of Student-Run Free Clinics conference committee and University of Nebraska Medical Center faculty mentors (William Hay, MD; Audrey Paulman, MD; Jessica Downes, PharmD; Ulrike Otten, MT(ASCP)) for their support of this event.

Disclosure Statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kevin Chen

Kevin Chen is a fellow in the National Clinician Scholars Program and clinical instructor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the Yale University School of Medicine and the Veterans Affairs Connecticut Healthcare System in New Haven, Connecticut.

Jessica Kruger

Jessica Kruger is a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Community Health and Health Behavior at the University at Buffalo in Buffalo, New York.

Noria McCarther

Noria McCarther is a medical student at the University of Kansas School of Medicine in Kansas City, Kansas.

Yasmin Meah

Yasmin Meah is an associate professor in the departments of General Internal Medicine, Medical Education, and Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, New York.