Use of an IHI Open School Resource to Engage Future Healthcare Professionals in Improving Patient Care and to Help Prevent Burnout

Background: Evidence shows that 1 in 2 healthcare professionals burnout during their career. As burnout affects all healthcare professionals, the CU Center for Interprofessional Practice & Education (CIPE) is determined to support wellness for all students on the Anschutz Medical Campus through its programming.

To increase student awareness of burnout and resilience skills, CIPE’s 2018 Interprofessional Open Campus Program (IOCP) theme was SOAR: Strengthening Ourselves through Awareness & Resilience. IOCP impacts ~ 700 students per year from 7 different healthcare programs.

The aim of this project was to develop an IOCP activity to engage students in learning about mindfulness in clinical care, making use of a well-respected resource from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Open School.

Design:
The Design Thinking Process utilizes five steps for curricular design: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test with the end user in mind. Based on these steps, we decided to integrate instructional design methods that meet the 3 psychological needs of Self Determination Theory: Autonomy, Relatedness, & Competency while making use of the IHI Open School module “Incorporating Mindfulness into Clinical Practice”

Autonomy was promoted by allowing students to self-select the activity from the IOCP menu and choose when to complete the asynchronous activity. Relatedness was fostered by dividing students into well-balanced interprofessional groups to participate in an IPE co-curricular discussion board. Competency was achieved by requesting students to submit certificates of completion of the IHI Open School module.

Results: Interest in the activity exceeded initial capacity with more than 60 students registering within 24 hours of its availability. Multiple professions participated including: anesthesiologist assistants, dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, physical therapy, and physician assistants. Qualitative comments indicated that students appreciated the flexibility of an online option for IOCP, this content was highly relevant to health professions students, mindfulness was important in both personal and professional life, as well as an intention to incorporate mindfulness into daily clinical practice.

Conclusion:
Incorporating the 3 psychological factors of Self-Determination Theory (Autonomy, Relatedness, and Competency) proved to be successful in designing an interprofessional activity to engage health professions students in training to prevent burnout in clinical practice.