Interprofessional Layered Learning: An Approach for Improving Trauma Informed Care Screening

Exposure to trauma is common and can have a significant impact on mental health and wellbeing across the lifespan. Recognizing and addressing trauma in ways that avoid re-traumatization and promote healing are a shared responsibility of health professionals. Learners from different programs enter interprofessional spaces with varying degrees of knowledge, skills, and experiences. A resulting challenge is designing activities and experiences that don’t intimidate or overwhelm more novice learners while still providing value to those more experienced. This session describes development of a module aimed at enhancing nursing, pharmacy, and social work learners’ abilities to engage in trauma-informed clinical interviewing through group discussion, role play, peer feedback, and debriefing. Presenters will discuss how layered learning leveraged varying degrees of expertise and comfort in providing trauma-informed care to mutually benefit, versus alienate, learners from all programs during role plays and feedback. Presenters will also share learning outcome data (pre-post knowledge assessment, Self-Efficacy Questionnaire, and Interprofessional Socialization and Valuing Scale) and feedback from learners across two iterations of the module and discuss how it facilitated improvements. Attendees will leave the session with practical tips, resources, and ideas for building and assessing interprofessional education around trauma-informed care, and how layered learning can be used to scaffold roles and responsibilities of interprofessional learners based on experience level.

After attending the seminar participants will be able to…

1. Describe how a layered learning approach can be used to navigate varying degrees of knowledge, skills, and experiences learners bring to interprofessional spaces.
2. Identify resources for developing and assessing interprofessional education focused on trauma-informed care.
3. Apply principles of layered learning to an existing interprofessional activity to appropriately scaffold roles and responsibilities of learners based on experience level.

Outline of session:
-Introductions (2 minutes)
-Active learning: polling questions (5 min)
-Overview of layered learning in IPE, and importance of trauma-informed care IPE (10 min)
-Description of two iterations of the module: learners, objectives, assessment, application of layered learning to activity design (20 min)
-Active learning: guided reflection and discussion board participation to share challenges encountered in managing varying levels of experience among interprofessional learners and strategies for addressing. (10 min)
-Presentation of outcome data, and how it informs future iterations and next steps (10 min)
-Active learning: Final polling questions, Q&A (10 min)

The seminar will address the conference theme of Interprofessional Learning for Collaborative Practice and Education by conceptualizing the layered learning practice model in the design of structured, safe, collaborative spaces where interprofessional learners with varying levels of experience can advance skills, discuss feedback, and share perspectives around trauma-informed care. It also supports the conference theme of Partnerships Advancing Care with People and Communities, by sharing ideas for building and assessing IPE around recognizing and addressing trauma in ways that avoid re-traumatization and promote healing and recovery.