Capitalizing on Teachable Moments in Interprofessional Education

Workshop Description:
The goal to prepare healthcare professionals to communicate and collaborate effectively across professions is widely endorsed, but achieving this goal in real time in the clinical learning environment requires educators who can skillfully coach communication and collaboration on the fly, including addressing challenging issues such as group dynamics, hierarchy, and mutual respect. This workshop will provide participants with strategies and skills to identify and capitalize on interprofessional (IP) teachable moments across clinical, simulated and/or classroom settings.

Facilitators will share a framework for approaching an IP teachable moment and an observational framework modified from a previously published tool, the Team Observed Structured Clinical Encounter (TOSCE). These frameworks can help participants avoid missed teaching opportunities and develop teaching scripts when working with IP learners across settings.

The workshop will utilize two sets of videos that will enable participants to practice IP teaching scripts and strategies to support learners in meeting their IPEC competencies. One set of videos was developed using a process of faculty review of actual student team interactions during an IP standardized patient exercise to identify common themes related to core IP competencies. The second set of videos was developed by faculty experienced in IP teaching and faculty development for an interprofessional teaching coaching program and depict IP learners in classroom and clinical settings. These video re-enactments include issues around leadership, role misunderstandings, and conflict management and negotiations. Facilitators will model specific phrases that participants can use on the fly, and coach participants to generate their own list of phrases and teaching scripts that can be used in the classroom, simulation, or clinical settings with the goal of helping learners improve their performance in IP situations.

Learner Outcomes:
Workshop participants will be able to:
1) Identify potential interprofessional teachable moments using an observational framework for IP teamwork, the modified TOSCE.
2) Describe a framework for identifying and acting on teachable moments.
3) Generate a list of scripts/phrases to utilize during interprofessional teachable moments.
4) Implement strategies to facilitate interprofessional learning in real time to avoid missed opportunities.