Universities Practice New Approach to Interprofessional Education

A pharmacy compounding club at the Washington State University College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences has implemented a new approach to interprofessional education (IPE) in a partnership with a medical dermatology club from Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences. The program was made effective during the 2018-2019 academic year.

The results and findings of the program were presented in a poster at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy in Chicago. The authors included professionals from both schools.

While interprofessional education opportunities are frequently incorporated into pharmacy school curricula, these 2 clubs instituted a student-teach-student model set in the compounding lab, with the aim of implementing a recurring, interactive, student-taught IPE session for pharmacy students and doctor of osteopathic medicine students. The ultimate goal was to establish the norms of collaborative health care teams for students before they enter the professional field.

Each IPE session functioned as a 2-hour interactive session offered once each semester. Roughly 25-30 students participated in each session, including pharmacy students in years 1-3 and medical students in years 1-2. Faculty facilitated the program and advised students as they developed and delivered most of the content.

Each discipline—pharmacy and osteopathic medicine—delivered a presentation and led an activity to illustrate their respective roles in patient care.

The sessions involved 6 steps: planning, topic selection, content development, medical student presentations, pharmacy student presentations, and student reflections.

The sessions revealed a discernable imbalance in the amount of new knowledge gained by students in each discipline: content presented by pharmacy students was almost exclusively new to osteopathic medicine students, while content presented by osteopathic medicine students had largely been covered in the pharmacy curriculum.

Pharmacy students did, however, gain experience in delivering educational materials by taking on additional teaching responsibilities.

The authors found that the student-teach-student model of learning has many benefits, ranging from increased confidence to leadership development.

Based on their observations, the authors recommended that future measures of success for the sessions be reevaluated to include more discipline-specific objectives, including new knowledge and skills gained.

While this IPE program is designed for use with the dermatology club, the authors also emphasized that many medical specialties utilize compounding, and thus could be included in similar sessions.

The authors concluded that student-teach-student IPE opportunities offer pharmacy students the chance to improve their confidence in educating others, as well as offers medical students the chance to expand their knowledge. They plan to collaborate with other specialties on similar student-teach-student projects and to develop unique objectives for students in various disciplines.

Reference

Darst E, Brand-Eubanks D, Scott M. "A Novel IPE Collaboration Between a Pharmacy Compounding Club and a Medical Dermatology Club." Presented at: 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy; July 13-17, 2019: Chicago, IL.