Teaching Person-Centered Care and Interprofessional Collaboration through a Virtual Mental Health World Café: A Mixed Methods IPE Pilot Project

Abstract

The purpose of this convergent mixed methods interprofessional education (IPE) pilot project was to help health profession students gain valuable insight about the experiences of people living with mental illness, to help them have a better understanding of person-centered care and have greater knowledge about the importance of interprofessional collaboration. A developmental workgroup which consisted of mental health consumers, four interdisciplinary students, and our team developed and implemented a virtual Mental Health World Café IPE event. Twelve other students attended the World Café event. A paired sample t-test was used to examine group differences between pre- and post-test scores for the Interprofessional Socialization and Valuing Scale and the Texas AHEC Survey measures among the four student leaders and the 12 student participants of the virtual Mental Health World Cafe. We conducted individual interviews with the four student leaders and collected reflective journals from the 12 students who attended the World Café event. We examined to what extent the statistically significant quantitative results supported the qualitative results separately for the student leaders and for the student participants of the virtual World Café. We also examined how both the quantitative and qualitative findings aligned with the key components of the Patient-Centered Care in Interprofessional Collaborative Practice Model. While the project allowed the students to reflect upon how they may apply the principles of person-centered care and interprofessional collaboration, the impact of the consumers on the student’s experiences was profound and resulted in widespread engagement of the students who attended the event.

Author contributions

PR, JL, & JZ were involved with manuscript development, manuscript writing, and data analysis JP, AG, EG, MC, & AZ were involved with manuscript writing and review

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this paper. All authors have contributed to the preparation of the manuscript, have read, and approved the submitted manuscript. All authors listed meet the authorship criteria according to the latest guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors and are in agreement with the manuscript. All relevant ethical safeguards have been met in relation to patient or subject protection, or animal experimentation, including, in the case of all clinical and experimental studies review by an appropriate ethical review committee and written informed patient consent. The research complies with the World Medical Association. The work is original and not under consideration by any other journal.

Additional information

Funding

The South Texas AHEC Program is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under grant U77HP03049. This project was also supported by the Linking Interprofessional Networks for Collaboration (LINC) Seed Grant Program at UT Health San Antonio.