Incorporating Students into Interprofessional Clinical Teams

Abstract

In order to meet the challenge of providing health care in the 21st century, educators across the nation have called for new approaches to health professions education, including opportunities for work-based learning, longitudinal clinical experiences extending across the duration of the formal program, and the chance to work in interprofessional teams. To answer this call, a group of educators from Belmont University School of Pharmacy, Lipscomb University College of Pharmacy, Mid Tennessee Collaborative Master of Social Work Program at Tennessee State University Department of Social Work, andVanderbiltUniversitySchoolsof Medicine and Nursing designed an innovative program for incoming students. From the very start of their respective curricula, students contribute to the care of patients in meaningful ways by working in interprofessional clinical teams. The program is called the Vanderbilt Program in Interprofessional Learning (VPIL). Given the complex and fast paced setting of health care, it is not easy to have incoming students join a clinical practice, yet VPIL has succeeded with such integration. The working learning teams consist of attending providers, medical post-graduate trainees, and students from medical, nursing, pharmacy, and social work schools. The program has established interprofessional competencies for students to obtain in the clinical practice working teams, roles for students in the care of individual patients and populations, and several innovative technology tools to facilitate achievement of individual and team goals. This workshop focuses on how to incorporate a group of early students from a variety of fields onto a clinical team. We will explore how the program allows students to work together in ways that foster student growth and patient care, while not being too taxing on the physician leaders of the teams. Workshop participants will 1) reflect on their own established or planned programs to use working learning teams, 2) explore barriers and solutions to creating these clinical teams, 3) interact with students and attendings who have overcome common obstacles in working together for individual patients and a panel of patients, and 4) develop action plans to establish/augment similar programs at one’s institution. Learning Objectives: 1. Share competencies for interprofessional students to master in the clinical setting. 2. Identify barriers and solutions to having interprofessional students practice on a team together in the clinic setting. 3. Learn various strategies for incorporating technology for supporting working learning teams in clinical practice. 4. Develop an action plan for expanding interprofessional student training in clinical practice at one’s institution.