Emily Ahern, SPT
Student Physical Therapist
University of Michigan-Flint
Emily is a student physical therapist at the University of Michigan-Flint. She graduated from Baldwin Wallace University with two degrees in music. She is also an active board member of the APTA-MI Pain SIG, Director of Research for HEART (Health Equity, Action, Research, Teaching), and works as a PT tech at an orthopaedic rehabilitation clinic. Emily’s future goals in her physical therapy career include knowledge translation of research and implementation strategies for interprofessional education, chronic pain, and pain neuroscience education into effective treatment strategies for clinical practice. Emily plans to continue this research through HEART, which is a student-run pro bono clinic that provides healthcare services to the residents within the Flint community.

Presenting at the Nexus Summit:

BackgroundHealthcare educators are challenged with preparing students for a multidisciplinary team environment. Integrating interprofessional socialization and dual professional identity within healthcare curricula are important for developing the next generation of medical providers. Health Professions Accreditors Collaborative suggests that interprofessional socialization and dual professional identity are essential components for clinical practice success. Interprofessional socialization is a general process, describing how an individual becomes a contributing member within a professional…
Background: Students in healthcare programs who perform research alongside faculty, create the identity of a Student Health Professional Research Assistant (SHPRA). Experiences between the SHPRA and their mentor are authentic, developing interprofessional socialization and dual identity formation by demonstrating the expected knowledge, behaviors, and skills that are integrated in their respective profession. Both students and faculty gain the value of intrinsic growth and professional development through interprofessional socialization and dual identity formation.Purpose: The purpose of this…