Insights from healthcare academics on facilitating interprofessional education activities

Health Care Clinical Preceptors' Attitudes Towards Interprofessional Education in Saudi Arabia: A Cross-Sectional Study

Introduction

IPE fosters a dynamic learning environment that may promote students' knowledge, abilities, and collaborative approach towards addressing challenging clinical circumstances. While much has been reported in the literature regarding these diverse IPE learning environments, limited information exists regarding clinical preceptors' attitude and perceptions of IPE, especially in Saudi Arabia. Given the impact clinical preceptors have on the formation of healthcare students exploring their perceptions, which may impact their actions is imperative.

Methodology

The study focused on understanding the attitudes and perceptions of clinical preceptors towards IPE in a healthcare setting in Saudi Arabia. The study was conducted in Saudi Arabia. Data was collected via Email letter of solicitation (LOS) which included a link to the Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale (RIPLS) survey. The LOS was sent to all the health care programs in Saudi Arabia.

Results

The study surveyed 182 clinical preceptors. The findings revealed consistent favorable opinions towards "Teamwork and Collaboration". The majority of preceptors concurred that learning alongside other students would increase students' efficiency on healthcare teams and deepen their comprehension of clinical issues. The "Roles and Responsibilities" category, however, obtained lower ranks in general from the preceptors. Not surprising, differences in rankings were greatest between preceptors who had and did not have IPE exposure, there were significant variations in views toward "Teamwork and Collaboration", "Negative Professional Identity", and "Roles and Responsibilities". Preceptors exposed to IPE showed lower median ratings for "Negative Professional Identity" and "Roles and Responsibilities" and better median scores for "Teamwork and Collaboration".

Conclusion

The attitudes and perceptions of preceptors who had experienced IPE were more favorable toward IPE and thus may foster it more effectively in the students they work with. Therefore, ensuring that all preceptors are aware of and have experience with IPE is important as we seek to promote person-centered care.

A Cytomegalovirus (CMV) Case Study to Promote Interprofessional Learning (IPL) Between Audiology and Biomedical Science Students in Higher Education

Modern and effective patient care requires specialist healthcare professionals working together. Interprofessional learning (IPL) seeks to provide opportunities for different healthcare disciplines to learn with, from and about each other. This study focused on the delivery and evaluation of a cytomegalovirus (CMV) case study workshop to facilitate IPL between two Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) regulated courses: Biomedical Science and Audiology. The 2 h online workshop consisted of 1) defining the roles, responsibilities and skills of the two healthcare professions, 2) the structure of the Biomedical Science and Audiology departments, 3) routes to HCPC registration, 4) core curriculum of both degree programmes and 5) interpreting interdisciplinary data related to a CMV patient case. The workshop was interactive, with the virtual learning environment promoting peer discussions and the use of online polling. Student responses were collected through an online questionnaire. A total of 108 respondents completed a post-event survey and Mann-Whitney U tests revealed there were no significant differences in the responses between the two student cohorts in response to each of the survey statements (p > 0.05). A total of 82.4% of students agreed that they need to know the role of other healthcare professionals for their future practice, whilst 84.2% agreed that the CMV case study was a good format to facilitate effective IPL. A total of 93.5% of respondents recognised the importance of both professions in diagnosing a patient with CMV. Thematic analysis identified four common themes, including appreciation of shared roles, recognition of similarities in registration pathways, working together to provide holistic patient care and the role of clinicians in the patient journey. This novel collaboration between Biomedical Science and Audiology facilitated effective IPL whilst meeting the interprofessional education HCPC requirements. Collaborative working is an essential component of delivering effective patient care and allied healthcare degrees need to provide opportunities within their curriculum to foster this. We hope this study encourages other higher education institutes to expand and develop their current IPL activities to include a broader spectrum of healthcare courses.

The Development and Evaluation of the Interprofessional Education Facilitation Program for Health Professionals Using the Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction (ARCS) Model of Instructional Design

Background It is important to learn interprofessional education (IPE) facilitation skills to promote interprofessional collaboration in healthcare. Nonetheless, to date, only a handful of IPE facilitation programs have been developed through research. Objective The objective of this study was to create an IPE facilitation program for healthcare professionals who wanted to promote interprofessional collaboration in their organizations based on the tenets of instructional design and evaluate its effectiveness. Methods This study's methodology was a mixed method based on relative subjectivism. We developed a two-day IPE facilitation program to learn IPE facilitation skills and promote interprofessional collaboration in the participants' own organizations. The program was developed based on the instructional design principles of the attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction (ARCS) model, measuring the participants' Interprofessional Facilitation Scale (IPFS) scores at three time points: before the first day, after the second day, and approximately one year after the course was completed. A one-way analysis of variance test was used to compare IPFS means at the three time points, and open-ended statements were qualitatively analyzed using thematic analysis. Results Twelve healthcare providers (four physicians, two pharmacists, one nurse, one rehabilitation worker, one medical social worker, one clinical psychologist, one medical secretary, and one other) participated in the completed IPE facilitation program. Their IPFS scores increased significantly from 17.4 ± 16.1 before the program to 38.1 ± 9.4 after the program and remained at 35.1 ± 11.7 for one year (p = 0.008). In addition, qualitative analysis suggested that the knowledge and skills learned in the program could be applied in the participants' workplaces, which helped them maintain their IPE facilitation skills. Conclusion We developed a two-day IPE facilitation program based on the ARCS instructional design model, and the participants' IPE facilitation skills scores increased and were maintained one year later.

Interprofessional health education teacher training at the University of Chile

The first interprofessional course that included students in the 8 undergraduate health programs at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Chile was implemented in 2015. For the 700 students, 35 teachers were trained as facilitators. The use of several strategies to train facilitators in interprofessional health education, such as working in small groups, role-playing, case analysis, personal development workshops with experts’ participation, teamwork skills, feedback, videos, and reading articles, proved to be helpful. Facilitators highlighted the use of syllabi as a fundamental tool for teaching and coordination. This guide describes the experience of interprofessional health education teacher training from 2015 to 2019, highlighting the following lessons learned: the importance of support from university authorities, raising faculty awareness about interprofessional health education and collaborative practice, creating a teachers’ coordination team including representatives from all health programs, and ongoing monitoring and feedback from participants.

Hearing the Voices of Wingless Angels: A Critical Content Analysis of Nurses' COVID-19 Experiences

The world has been affected by an outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). Health care workers are among those most at risk of contracting the virus. In the fight against the coronavirus, nurses play a critical role. Still, most social media platforms demonstrate that nurses fear that their health is not being prioritized. The purpose of this study is to investigate nurses' experiences through analyzing the main themes shared on Instagram by nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast with highly structured research, the current paper highlights nurses' natural language use in describing their experiences during the first months of the outbreak in their workplace. Instagram captions were utilized as a data source. Leximancer was utilized for the content analysis of nurses' narratives towards their coronavirus experience. We sought to accomplish three research objectives: the first was to identify the main themes in the descriptions of nurses' experiences shared via their social media, specifically Instagram; then, to determine the relationships among concepts, and finally, to give useful implications based on the findings. The current study uses a qualitative (i.e., narratives) approach to analyze the main components of the nurses' experiences during the pandemic. The Leximancer software analysis revealed nine major textual themes and the relationships among these themes. In order of the relative importance, the themes were "patients", "coronavirus", "exhaustion", "family", "hospital", "personal protective equipment" (PPE), "shift", "fear", and "uncertainty". The results offer practical implications based on the social media information regarding nurses' overall experiences.