Evaluation of an Interprofessional Education Curriculum in a Network of Student-Faculty Collaborative Practices

Background: The Crimson Care Collaborative (CCC) is a network of seven student-faculty collaborative practices that provide primary care across the greater Boston area, highlighting interprofessional education (IPE). Over 400 student volunteers participate each semester including dental, medical, physician assistant, nursing, nutrition, social work and undergraduate student volunteers from seven local health professions training programs. Critical to modern healthcare practice, IPE allows students across health professions to learn about each other’s roles, preparing them to effectively serve on interprofessional (IP) teams(1). Interprofessional practice requires development of core competencies that allow safe, effective and meaningful collaboration across health professions. A core CCC goal is to ensure that volunteers have acquired IPE competencies as described by the national Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC)(2). For this reason, IPE curriculum was refined to complement the clinical interprofessional experience and strengthen learners’ IPE knowledge and readiness for IP practice(3).



Methodology: Student and faculty from diverse health professions formed a CCC-IPE committee and identified clinical scenarios encountered by CCC students to support development of competency in IPE. These included understanding different healthcare roles, social determinants of health, and team-based care. Monthly case-based teaching sessions developed by student-faculty dyads focused on IPEC competencies. The use of facilitator guides ensured high-quality didactic education and standardize teaching across sites. A post-session survey using a 5-point Likert scale evaluated the educational experience.



Results: IP student-faculty teams developed six patient-cases used across 5 sites. 66 students participated in IPE sessions and completed post-session evaluations. Average attendance was 1.5±1.2 sessions. On a 1-5 Likert scale (strongly disagree to strongly agree), students reported mean agreement of 4.2±0.7 and 4.0±0.8 with the statements “This session improved my understanding of interprofessional education” and “This session improved my knowledge of how to function as part of a team”, respectively.



Conclusion: IPE patient-cases developed by the IP team are effective in advancing and reinforcing CCC students’ knowledge of the IPEC core competencies. Future steps in continuing these efforts include dissemination across CCC sites, development of additional patient-cases and continued evaluation to ensure they meet CCC’s educational mission and IPEC core competencies.



Funded by HRSA ANEW Grant: T94HP30909