Interprofessional Collaborative Practice Competencies and Refugee Health Care: Online Clinical Learning Modules

Project overview:
The Teaching Today’s Students for Tomorrow’s America (TTSTA) project offered an innovative, interprofessional, culturally responsive approach to improving access to and quality of primary care for local refugee populations, while educating health providers and students for collaborative practice environments. Our interprofessional project team developed and tested two online clinical learning modules for asynchronous learning, titled: Interprofessional Collaborative Practice (IPCP) Competencies, and Refugee Culture and Health

Resource and outcomes:
The online TTSTA modules consist of two 60-minute voice-over PowerPoints with discussion questions and links to related content. Peer review of the modules’ content, facilitated by the National Center for Interprofessional Education, yielded high overall ratings. Interprofessional health care providers and students, both directly affiliated with the project and in programs or courses with a focus on vulnerable populations (N=251), completed the modules over the 18 months of project. Three online pre/post surveys (the Refugee Culture and Health Survey, the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) Competency Self-Assessment Tool version 3 (IPECv3), and the Assessment for Collaborative Environments (ACE-15)) were collected and analyzed. Overall, each online clinical learning module showed evidence of providing a foundation of knowledge to enrich IPCP clinical learning, improve culturally-responsive healthcare for refugees, and support healthcare’s evolution towards team-based practice.

How participants will be able to apply the knowledge gained once back in their own environment:
Healthcare providers and students can become more skilled interprofessional collaborative practice team members, and provide more culturally-responsive, patient-centered, community-based care, attentive to the patients’ unique circumstances as refugees as a vulnerable population, and seamless in their abilities to care for a persons’ whole spectrum of concerns.

Funding acknowledgement:
This project was supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Nurse Education, Practice, Quality and Retention (NEPQR) Interprofessional Collaborative Practice (IPCP) and Interprofessional Education (IPE) Cooperative Agreement under grant number, UD7HP28542, for $1,337,115. This information or content and conclusions are those of the author and should not be construed as the official position or policy of, nor should any endorsements be inferred by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.