Promoting IPE Scholarly Dissemination Through a Peer-to-Peer Based Writers’ Workshop
Background: Generating scholarly output is a perpetual challenge for health sciences faculty who often juggle heavy teaching and practice workloads. At UT Health San Antonio, where clinical faculty are the primary drivers of interprofessional education (IPE) activity across campus, this challenge resonates. In response, members of Linking Interprofessional Networks for Collaboration (LINC), an institution-wide initiative to advance IPE, developed and implemented a pilot writers’ workshop targeting faculty currently engaged in IPE projects and disseminating their results in the IPE literature. The LINC Writers’ Workshop was designed as a peer-to-peer engine for identifying opportunities, managing challenges, and setting goals for IPE project-specific scholarly dissemination.
Design: Awardees of the 2019 and 2020 LINC Seed Grant Program, designed to support innovative IPE projects at UT Health San Antonio, were invited to an online microcourse featuring (a) asynchronous modules with presentations and assigned readings on IPE publication options, with exemplar papers and (b) live online peer-to-peer discussions and guest presentations from IPE experts, including IPE journal editors. Thematic analysis using a qualitative descriptive approach was applied to free-text, post-module survey responses and live online discussion transcripts that included input from workshop participants (n=10) and LINC faculty presenters (n=6).
Results: Of the themes that emerged from data analysis, the microcourse workshop design, rationale for IPE engagement, and peer-to-peer learning had the highest proportion of codes associated with positive sentiment. On the other hand, challenges related to deconflicting workload priorities with scholarly production and aligning objectives dictated by curricular standards had the highest proportion of codes associated with negative sentiment. The highest proportion of codes highlighted the need to establish mechanisms for formal collaboration, informal interaction, and sustained mentorship between faculty and staff who are driving IPE activity and related scholarly dissemination across schools.
Conclusion/Implications: Both LINC faculty presenters and workshop attendees expressed that the LINC Writers’ Workshop was an important first step toward resetting goals for scholarly dissemination related to current and future IPE projects, and for establishing a peer support network specific to IPE project development and scholarly writing. Based on participant feedback, we will offer improved iterations of the LINC Writers’ Workshop and establish a campus-wide IPE writers’ group as part of LINC-sponsored faculty and staff development programming throughout the year.
