Background: At our institution, an interprofessional (IP) hospital team consisting of a hospitalist, pharmacist, and nurse practitioner, meets with IP teams from local skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) in a weekly teleconference to discuss patients recently discharged from the hospital to the SNFs. The purpose is to identify and reconcile gaps in care during patients’ transitions. We sought to utilize this novel transitional care platform for novel interdisciplinary education and training.
Purpose: We obtained a grant from our institution’s interprofessional education center to build an interprofessional learning experience centered around this teleconference, with the aim of teaching learners the importance of working within an IP team to perform safe hospital-to-SNF care transitions and to allow them to learn about eachothers’ roles in care transitions.
Description: We collaborated with various professional training programs, both within and outside of our institution. We designed a weeklong educational experience for the learners, which includes: 1) watching an online module that describes care transitions within SNFs, 2) participating in a one-hour interactive session on IP competencies within transitions of care facilitated by a Geriatrics fellow and a geriatrician, and 3) attending the weekly teleconference. Interprofessional trainees in groups of 2-5 participate in this weekly educational experience and fill out a post-survey to reflect on their experience. Over 3 months, twenty learners from 3 academic institutions have participated, including pharmacy, nurse practitioner, clinical nurse specialist, and medical students, as well as medicine, medicine-psychiatry, and family medicine residents. Sixteen learners (80%) have completed the post-survey, which includes pertinent items modified from the W(e) Learn Interprofessional (IP) Program Assessment tool. The learning activities, the facilitators, and the overall experience have been rated highly on the survey by the majority of the respondents. In open-ended questions on the survey, learners reflected the importance of working in an interprofessional team and identified specific take-home points regarding care transitions to apply to their practice. One learner wrote: “I learned the important qualities to be successful in team-based care. In future inter-professional opportunities, I will clearly communicate my role to other team members, seek and advice.” Another learner described a take-home point: “Ensuring appropriate, clear discharge instructions in terms of antibiotic schedules and medication instructions.” We will continue holding weekly sessions through June 2023 and collect additional data.
Conclusions: This interprofessional, multi-institutional learning activity has engaged IP learners and has been rated highly by participants. Next steps include ongoing program evaluation and engaging other IP learners, including physical and occupational therapy students. A similar experience could be adopted elsewhere for interprofessional education.