Interprofessional Education Innovation Through Virtual Health Care Team Visits

Background: Participation in interprofessional education (IPE) during formal education is necessary to properly prepare students to collaborate with various disciplines in their clinical practice. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated room capacity restrictions and social distancing recommendations have made it challenging for educators and institutions to continue the implementation of IPE activities. The safety of students and patients/clients is necessary when providing IPE opportunities in our current pandemic climate. Therefore, telehealth modality was implemented to ensure student and patient/client comfort and safety.
The interprofessional team visit (IPTV) is a multi-component program where 557 students from medical, dental, social work, pharmacy, and athletic training health profession programs work as a team to conduct a virtual health care visit with a standardized patient. Interprofessional teams evaluate various aspects of a patient’s physical and social health. The virtual IPTV allows IPE to occur remotely so students and patients can engage in an environment that is safe and secure. Components include interprofessional teams synchronous orientation session, asynchronous learning modules, IPT huddles, telehealth simulation with standardized patients, and IPT debriefs. After the virtual IPTV, students collaborate to determine the patient’s current health status, identify areas of risk, developed a care plan, and provided support/resources when appropriate. Description of seminar: During this interactive workshop, learners will engage with the facilitators in peer-to-peer learning. Facilitators will demonstrate the virtual IPTV. After attending this workshop, the learner will be able to identify various telehealth platforms that can be used to conduct a virtual IPTV, understand challenges and lessons learned of transitioning to a virtual IPTV, discuss considerations for developing patient cases that encourage active engagement of each represented health care professions, and implement a virtual IPTV. The summit theme will be addressed through an interactive peer to peer learning format. Facilitators will demonstrate the components of the IPTV program and how it supports and advances interprofessional learning and collaboration among the various health care profession students. Attention will be given to educational content, patient case development, telehealth modalities, logistics, and strategies to reduce implementation barriers. Immediately actionable skills and/or practice knowledge that learners will gain is the ability to demonstrate strategies to overcome logistical barriers, identify preferred telehealth platforms, recognize considerations of IPT size and make up, and skills to develop a patient case. Facilitators will use active learning strategies. Learners will be divided into multidisciplinary teams. The workshop will utilize polling, breakout tables, and role play throughout the session. Polling will be used to gather information from the learners to further understand their discipline, institution, and interprofessional education curricular needs and goals. Breakout tables will allow learners to engage in peer discussion regarding application of concepts to their discipline/institution. In addition, learners will remain at the same break out table so they can work with the same “team” throughout the session. This will facilitate in building new relationships or a network that can be used beyond the Nexus Summit as learners return to their home institutions and initiate or continue IPE program development.