University of Pittsburgh

Interprofessional Education

Interprofessional Education and Team Communications

Twenty-first century physicians must successfully function in a health care environment that capitalizes on the resources of teams to deliver patient care.  Improvements in quality, reduction in cost, optimization of efficiency and ultimately achieving the best possible patient outcomes and safety all depend on highly effective and smoothly functioning teams.  Physicians in training are at an ideal teachable moment in their professional development to understand and master these team communication skills.

At UPSOM, the approach to interprofessional and team education is to incorporate this as a longitudinal curriculum theme where there is a progressive build and reinforcement throughout the four years.  Students develop these skills through a spectrum of clinical and non-clinical experiences, each contributing to their personal development.  Within this domain is also the development of leadership skills which includes both the ability to lead and the ability to function well with a leader. 

Participation in interdisciplinary teams has always been sufficiently complex due to hierarchies among professions, cultural differences, and gender and age differences.  Today’s students also must develop expertise in coping across generational divides where their millennial generation may view work, the world, and interpersonal relationships differently than their teachers and supervisors.  Curricular experiences necessarily provide exposure to these issues in everyday encounters as students learn to assume their responsibilities as mature members of the health care delivery team.

Goal

Help all students develop the skills and behaviors necessary to function well within and to lead professional and interprofessional teams.

Implementation

The following are a sample of the curricular experiences in interprofessional and team education.

Interprofessional ForumClick here for IPE Pitt

Since it was initiated in 2008, this annual half-day experience provides students from all University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences Schools, including all first year medical students, the opportunity to learn together about the essential and fundamental importance of interprofessional healthcare delivery.  After observing a patient interview, students heard from a diverse panel of health sciences deans about the opportunities for improved patient care and interprofessional communication that were revealed.  Students were then charged to develop their own proposals for improving interprofessional education at the University of Pittsburgh as part of an annual prize competition for curricular development in this domain. 

Basic Science of Care Course

All second year medical students complete this course, together with students from the Schools of Nursing and Pharmacy.  The course is lead by senior physician, nursing, and pharmacy faculty as it introduces crosscutting topics in patient care delivery, including health care economics, quality improvement, medical informatics and patient safety.  Medical, nursing and pharmacy and other health sciences students work together in the small group setting to develop solutions to challenging contemporary health care problems. Follow this link to learn more about the Basic Science of Care Course.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interprofessional Healthcare Senior Elective

This new fourth year elective brings together advanced-level students in medicine, nursing, pharmacy and social work to learn about and practice team-based care, in clinical settings.   A combination of small group discussions, problem-solving sessions and clinical care provides a rich experience where students come to appreciate the complexities of how interprofessional teams function and how to make this functioning ever more successful.  Specific course goals include helping students to:

  • appreciate the range and variety of services that are necessary to deliver optimum health care, and understand
  • clarify the knowledge, skills, and resources that different professions bring to well-integrated health care delivery
  • develop an understanding and respect for the contributions of other professions
  • explore overlapping vs. unique roles and responsibilities of different professions on a team
  • learn to communicate constructively and efficiently with the team
  • learn to design patient care plans based on shared input from multiple professions
  • appreciate one’s own limitations and recognize when it is appropriate to seek advice or assistance from another profession.

The Interprofessional Health Care Teams elective course provides a unique and exciting opportunity not only to educate students in different health care professions about the principles of effective team-based care but, critically, to place them in health care settings where they can observe and directly practice such care.  The Schools of Health Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh are developing strategies and additional experiences to advance interprofessional education. Explore this link to learn more about the Interprofessional Health Care Senior Elective Course.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clinical Clerkship Experiences

Medical students necessarily are assimilated into interprofessional teams in a variety of care settings as part of the clinical experience.  For example, the anesthesia and surgical faculty serve as superb and continuous models of how physicians may interact with a multi-disciplinary team as nurses, technicians, perfusionists and a broad range of support staff come together in the complex environments of the peri-operative and surgical suite. 

All students also have at least two week’s experience in emergency department care as part of the Specialty Care Clerkship.  Students are immersed in an environment that depends on synchrony among all members in the chain of health care delivery, beginning in the pre-hospital setting and extending all the way to the inpatient ward.  One of the most vivid examples of this to which students are easily drawn is the trauma team experience.  Here, students come to learn how the contributions of all of the trauma team members from various medical, surgical, nursing, imaging and laboratory departments converge to deliver the best possible care with the greatest rapidity.  These highly effective teams demonstrate how clear communication, collaboration and preparation result in the best possible care of the patient.  They also have an opportunity to observe the dynamic nature of these highly functioning teams as leadership roles are often quite fluid with the arrival and departure of various clinical specialists to the trauma resuscitation suite.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Community Experiences

Students are exposed to a range of interprofessional teams during the Clinical Experiences Course, a required course for first and second year students.  Students often rotate in clinical settings that are primarily staffed by physician extenders and other health professionals, where physicians may play a relatively minor, though valued, role.  Medical students, as physicians in training, are well served to recognize that the majority of patient benefit in these settings is delivered by someone other than the physician.  This provides an irreplaceable opportunity for modeling how they may function well as part of interprofessional teams, and a glimpse of how a large portion of health care will necessarily be delivered looking to the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pandemic Preparedness Exercise

As a component of the Pre-Clerkship Course that marks the transition from the pre-clinical to clerkship years, all rising third students participate in a curriculum on disaster preparedness, including preparation for a possible pandemic.  Part of that disaster curriculum is a pandemic avian influenza hospital simulation exercise.  This unique simulation exercise provides teams of medical students with an opportunity to treat overwhelming numbers of influenza patients in a mock hospital setting. When students assume the working roles of nurse, nursing assistant, and physician, they immediately gain insight into two subjects that are difficult to teach:  1) the potentially overwhelming nature of an infectious pandemic; and 2) the vital importance of teamwork, cooperation, interdisciplinary respect, and leadership in healthcare endeavors.  Students readily gain appreciation for the essential roles of every member of the healthcare team in a manner that cannot easily be replicated in everyday experiences.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Geriatrics Healthy Aging Program

Opportunities for rising second year students exist to participate in a summer-long healthy aging fellowship sponsored by the School of Pharmacy. Medical students join students from the Schools of Dental Medicine, Social Work, Pharmacy, and Nursing to engage in activities around healthy aging, learning to communicate with older adults and coming to understand the scope of practice of each discipline.