Abstract
"Objective: Accreditation standards mandate more interprofessional education (IPE) experiences for students, occurring in both the didactic and experiential portion of the curriculum. The objective of this study was to develop and pilot telehealth WebEx IPE case activities with prescribing health care professional students. |Methods: Dispensing and Patient Care is a required course with a laboratory component offered to first through third year pharmacy students. In the fall semester, the instructor for the course and several pharmacy faculty partnered with a nearby physician assistant college to develop interprofessional cases. Using telehealth technology, the physician assistant students were paired with pharmacy students and evaluated patient cases. Pharmacy and physician assistant faculty were moderators in each virtual room and evaluated students on their recommendations. Pre- and post-Team Skills Scale question scores were compared using paired student's t tests. |Results: There were statistically significant improvements for all independent Team Skills Scale (TSS) questions after the telehealth WebEx case activities. Overall total scores increased from 60.5+/-10.3 to 70.3 +/- 6.6, p<0.001. Examining data collected from the school's other IPE events was pre-TSS 66.4+0.4, post-TSS 72.7+0.4, p<0.01. In these telehealth WebEx case activities, the students ranked themselves a bit lower at baseline, but this was their first IPE activity. |Implications: With new accreditation requirements, schools of pharmacy may find it challenging to develop efficient and effective ways to incorporate meaningful IPE experiences into their curricula. This telehealth WebEx IPE activity was easily integrated into an existing course and improved students' attitudes and perceptions of their abilities to provide collaborative care. "