Evaluating Health Professional Students Working with Older Adults with the Interprofessional Socialization and Valuing Scale

The Wayne State University Interprofessional Team Visit (IPTV) is a program that introduces medical, nursing, occupational therapy, pharmacy, physical therapy, physician assistant, dental, and social work students to working in a collaborative team to perform an older adult home visit and assessment. During the visit, students ask questions about the older adult’s daily activities, nutrition, medications, family health, and social supports.

There is a need to evaluate the engagement of students in teams to ensure proper health care delivery. The Interprofessional Socialization and Valuing Scale (ISVS), measures self-perceived experiences with collaborative teamwork, including the ability, value, and comfort in working with others. Students are given a pre- and post- survey utilizing the ISVS tool. There are 18 questions pertaining to perceptions about working with professionals from other disciplines. Students respond to each question using a 7-point scale with 1 = “Not at All” and 7 = “To a Very Great Extent.”

In addition to understanding the student’s experience in interprofessional practice, the older adults’ feedback is obtained through a post-visit questionnaire. Motivations are examined, such as: helping educate the students, socializing, checking on their health, and receiving a gift card incentive. They are also asked about what additional student disciplines they would like to see during visits.

The lightning talk will discuss the differences between groups of students in feeling comfortable working in teams, as well as motivations for older adults’ participation. It is found that ISVS scores increase from pre- to post-survey, second year medical students and third year pharmacy students feel more comfortable working in teams, and teams consisting of these two have higher average scores. The responses from the older adults is still being analyzed. Feedback from both groups ensures better care, value, and education of future healthcare practitioners, as well as fully engages the patients.