Background: Interprofessional Education (IPE) is an accreditation requirement for pharmacy, nursing, physician assistant (PA), and medical schools. Developing quality IPE learning activities that are meaningful and relevant to all learners can be challenging due to different levels of exposure and training in the discipline-specific curriculum.
Purpose: We developed an interprofessional quality improvement/patient safety (QI/PS) workshop that included students from the schools of medicine, nursing, physician assistant, and pharmacy to meet the accreditation requirement. Our objective was to investigate satisfaction and perception of the workshop from students in the four disciplines. The study was approved by our IRB.
Description: We implemented a monthly 2-hour IPE virtual workshop to review QI/PS concepts and practices including process maps, fishbone diagrams, and root cause analysis. Prior to participating in the workshop, all students completed the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) module, QI 102: How to Improve with the Model for Improvement. The workshop took place over Zoom and was designed to be interactive, with a mix of didactic PowerPoint slides and breakouts into smaller groups consisting of students from the four disciplines. Each group also had a faculty facilitator who monitored the small group discussion, answered questions, and moved the case forward. At the end of the workshop, students completed an online questionnaire to rate the activity and comment on strengths and areas for improvement.
Conclusions: From January 2021 to April 2023, 217 medical, 138 nursing, 60 PA, and 30 pharmacy students participated in the workshop. Data showed that 93% of the nursing students and 80% of pharmacy students rated the overall quality of the workshop as very good or excellent, while medical students and PA students gave lower ratings at 68% and 63% respectively. Students generally exhibited a good understanding of each discipline’s roles, responsibilities, and perspectives concerning the evaluation of patient safety events (88.2% to 94.9% agreement) and quality improvement (89.6% to 94.9% agreement). Students tended to have a better grasp of their own discipline’s role compared to others, and nursing and pharmacy students consistently rated their own disciplines more favorably than others. Overall, students held positive opinions about the effectiveness of the facilitators and the workshop’s quality. Notably, ratings varied across disciplines, with nursing students giving the highest ratings (4.75 for facilitators and 4.60 for overall quality). Positive themes from comment analysis demonstrated that medical and PA students enjoyed working with other disciplines, nursing students appreciated the small group activities and interactivity, and pharmacy students liked the clinical teaching methodology. Nursing and pharmacy students rated the QI/PS workshop more highly than medical and PA students, with learners from each discipline valuing different aspects of the session. Further investigation into these differences will allow for continuous improvement of the workshop. We implemented an interactive IPE workshop to educate students on important QI/PS concepts that they can utilize throughout their careers as practicing healthcare professionals.