The Touro Interprofessional Education Collaborative (TIPEC)
Four Touro Faculty Members Collaborate on a Pilot Program for Interprofessional Education
As participants in the Touro College Academy of Leadership and Management (TCALM) inaugural class of 2018, we were charged with developing and planning a project that would support the mission, vision, value and strategic plan of Touro College and University System (TCUS). Dr. Tamie Proscia-Lieto asks, “What do you get when you put a Doctor, a Dentist, a Physical Therapist and a Nurse together?”
An Interprofessional Team!!!
The Touro Interprofessional Education Collaborative (TIPEC) is an interprofessional education (IPE) pilot program. It seeks to imbed an interdisciplinary professional health education training model across the many distinct schools and programs that Touro College operates for health professions. The “common thread” of TIPEC will help form professional culture, curriculum, and perspective that will give our graduates a consistent skillset of interprofessional collaborative dialogue, the main beneficiary of which will be the patients that their interdisciplinary teams will care for. Accreditation bodies require meaningful IPE experiences as part of healthcare educational program curricula. This is viewed as a necessary step in preparing a “Collaborative Practice Ready” health workforce (World Health Organization, 2010).
Interprofessional education is defined as students from two or more distinct healthcare professions participating in educational activities together, with the goal of providing patient-centered care. These valuable experiences typically require students and faculty to travel from several campuses to a single location. Time spent in arranging schedules and traveling can be costly. The TIPEC pilot offers the advantage of being technologically based, resource efficient and geographically independent while at the same time encompassing our network of health profession programs to advance the Touro College IPE initiative.
Program Objectives:
- Prepare students for lifelong practice providing healthcare to diverse communities in a collaborative environment emphasizing excellence
- Meet individual program accreditation requirements aligned with the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) core competencies.
- Utilize available technology to overcome geographical barriers and enabling collaboration between the Touro College health professions programs including but not limited to the School of Health Sciences, College of Osteopathic Medicine and College of Dental Medicine.
- Utilize available technology (Canvas, Zoom, Qualtrics), faculty abilities and administrative support to control resource expenditure.
- Identify and review clinical cases in small groups with high degree of relevance for multiple disciplines
Sessions will comprise small groups of students and faculty meeting over Zoom for a period of 45 minutes to discuss and evaluate a clinical case. Each group will describe relevant general and profession-specific aspects of the case and collaborate to develop a team management plan of care. Faculty will take the role of facilitators rather than lecturers, prepared with questions and talking points designed to address the IPEC (2016) core competencies for collaborative practice. Students will be assigned a pre-and post-session quiz to evaluate their attitude before and after the activity (Zorek et al., 2016).
The initial pilot session was held on May 20th with participating faculty and five students from the dental school. The next pilot will be conducted in November with two students from each of the four disciplines.
We hope the TIPEC will act as a valuable supplement to, rather than replacement of, IPE programs that have already been implemented in the various schools. Should the pilot be successful, we hope to imbed this program across the many distinct programs that Touro College operates for the health professions.
Acknowledgements: We thank the 2018 TCALM team, President Alan Kadish, Provost Patricia Salkin, Vice President Judah Weinberger and the Chairs, Directors and Deans at our respective schools for their support with this program.
References:
IPEC (2016). Core Competencies for Collaborative Practice https://nebula.wsimg.com/2f68a39520b03336b41038c370497473?AccessKeyId=DC06780E69ED19E2B3A5&disposition=0&alloworigin=1
World Health Organization (2010): Framework for Action on Interprofessional Education & collaborative Practice https://www.georgebrown.ca/ipe/definitions.aspx
Zorek, J. A., Fike, D. S., Eickhoff, J. C., Engle, J. A., MacLaughlin, E. J., Dominguez, D. G., & Seibert, C. S. (2016). Refinement and validation of the Student Perceptions of Physician-Pharmacist Interprofessional Clinical Education Instrument. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Eeducation, 80(3), 47. doi:10.5688/ajpe80347
