Interprofessional Learning (IPL) innovation through community site assessments: The faculty of health sciences students’ and facilitators’ reflections

ABSTRACT

Interprofessional Learning (IPL) prepares and upskills health service providers to function optimally in their collaborative care role. Expanding IPL to communities outside of traditional institutional and clinical settings is critical. We aimed to document the students’ and facilitators’ reflections on an IPL experience through community site assessments. This was a descriptive qualitative case study in which students and facilitators were assigned to multidisciplinary teams, to conduct community site assessments. Data were collected from both students’ and staff’s reflections on the activity. A total of 401 students and 4 academic staff facilitators participated in 22 community sites. The main themes that were generated were; an emerging sense of advocacy, appreciation of their socio-economic status and multidisciplinary collaboration within the faculty. Exposure through community site assessments is recommended to strengthen the multidisciplinary collaboration among faculty academic staff and to prepare undergraduate students to become a collaborative practice-ready health workforce within and outside institutional and clinical settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Interprofessional Learning
• community site assessments
• faculty of health sciences
• multidisciplinary students

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the support of participating academic staff, students and members of all participating community sites. We recognize contributions from Professor Lionel Green Thompson, Professor Patricia McInerney and Shirra Moch from Centre for Health Sciences Education unit for organising the faculty IPL activities, Dr Amme Mardulate Tshabala and Ms Kaashifa Gathoo for their contribution in planning and implementation of the activities.

All the four authors were involved in the conceptualization, planning and implementation of the IPL project. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. Dr Juliet Nyasulu is the guarantor of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was declared by the author.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Juliet C. Y. Nyasulu

Dr Juliet C. Y. Nyasulu Works for the University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Health Sciences, Division of Community Paediatrics. A health systems strengthening technical specialist with a PhD in public health, MPH and BSC in community Health. She has >25 years’ experience in health systems through quality assurance approaches and operational research in South Africa, Malawi and Mozambique. Her research outputs have greatly contributed towards improving access to SRH and HIV services including PMTCT. Dr Nyasulu serves as a Chairperson for the Polio National Certification Committee for South Africa, overseeing the national polio eradication initiatives.

Abigail Ruth Dreyer

Abigail Ruth Dreyer works for the University of the Witwatersrand, Division of Rural Health, served as Chairperson of the Faculty Committee for Community-Based Health Science Education (CoBHSE), with >25 years’ experience of working in rural communities in South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland. She holds an MPH, BA and Advanced Diploma in Adult Education. Her research interests include collabrative practice and interprofessional teaching and research.

Mpho Molete

Dr Mpho Molete A Specialist in Community Dentistry with a MSc in Dental Public Health from Kings College London and an MDent in Community Dentistry from the University of the Witwatersrand. She works for Wits School of Oral Health Sciences, Her research interests are child oral health and health systems research.

Gaolatlhe Mothoagae

Gaolatlhe Mothoagae has vast experience in Community-Based Education Development with MPHand a BSc (Physio) from the University of Cape Town. Worked for the Centre for Health Science Education, University of the Witwatersrand and her research interests include community-based health professional education and inter-professional education.