Bridging disciplines: An evaluation of learning about Interprofessional roles and responsibilities through an interactive group activity

Abstract

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines interprofessional education (IPE) as “when two or more professions learn about, from and with each other”, and considers IPE a necessary component of a “collaborative practice-ready” workforce.¹ In this article we describe an interprofessional educational activity that focused on increasing students' knowledge of healthcare professionals' roles and responsibilities. Faculty members representing six healthcare related disciplines collaborated to develop an interactive group activity. Students from athletic training, nutrition, nursing, pharmacy, social work and speech-language pathology programs participated in a 1-h interactive session focusing on comparing and contrasting 20 common roles and responsibilities between each discipline. Each student completed a knowledge assessment prior to and after the interactive session. Using a matched pair pre-post design, we compared students' scores on their knowledge of interprofessional roles and responsibilities before and after the intervention. The findings revealed that students displayed an overall increase in knowledge. This intervention demonstrates that an interprofessional group-based activity can be a useful tool to increase students' understanding of various healthcare roles and their responsibilities. By improving knowledge, these students could be better prepared to participate in an interprofessional healthcare team, thereby improving the quality of patient-centered care.