Interprofessional Education

By: Brian Rose

IPE – Not just another acronym

 

On the eve of the Cy-Hawk trophy football game, all first-year healthcare students from the University of Iowa gathered at the Iowa Memorial Union for our initial interprofessional education (IPE) meeting. I’d like to share a few of my thoughts.

First, as I and many others settled into our respective seats in the ballroom, my initial thought was, “Wow, there are a lot of students here.” This was reaffirmed as we were told just how many students from each program were in the room. If my memory serves me right, over 70 teams comprised of eight to nine students from varying programs were in attendance. Programs included: medicine, pharmacy, nursing, physical therapy, social work, dental, physician assistant, speech pathology, and health administration.

I don’t think I would be speaking only for myself when I say that I think most people would rather be doing something else on a Friday afternoon. Yet, we were all here – not necessarily eager, but ready to experience just what interprofessional education was.

I believe the experience each of us had varied somewhat dramatically dependent on other group members and our facilitator. Fortunately, my group members were very inclusive and focused, and we had a tremendous facilitator. One thing I found interesting occurred during the development of our team values. We each were asked to come up with five values, which we then shared to the group and took the most common to come up with our team values. For this exercise, with different professions represented within our group, I felt there would be a variety of responses. However, I was wrong. Our group had several overlapping values. These included values such as humility and grace, honesty, and communication. Values such as these reflect a great advantage for our group moving forward. Being able to put aside personal accomplishment or status to work together is an important part of patient-centered care. Furthermore, honest communication is essential when working in a team environment. I was pleasantly surprised that our team had these overlapping values, and I foresee these values helping us become successful throughout the remainder of the course and into our professional lives.

As the three hours wound down, I became increasingly aware of the fact that although we would rather be doing something else in the moment, the benefit of experience like this will be rare. It is relatively easy to sit at a table, directed by a facilitator, and discuss patient-centered care and working together interprofessionally. However, there will be a time when it will be necessary to be put into practice – and that will not be so easy. Hopefully, we can lean on experiences such as the ones provided by this course in order to facilitate proper patient-centered care. And when that day comes, we’ll be glad we weren’t anywhere else on that Friday afternoon, because then IPE is no longer just another acronym – it’s a way of practice.