Evaluating the impact of a synchronous virtual interprofessional education workshop series on perceptions of interprofessional education for preclinical health professional students

Introduction

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many health professional programs were forced to swiftly transition interprofessional education (IPE) from in-person to virtual learning experiences while still achieving interprofessional outcomes such as improving student perceptions. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of a synchronous virtual IPE Workshop Series on perceptions for preclinical health professional students.

Methods

To determine if there was a change in perceptions following each virtual workshop, pre- and post-workshop mean item scores were calculated, and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to assess for changes. To determine whether there was a difference in perceptions between virtual and in-person workshops, pre- and post-workshop mean item scores were calculated, and the Wilcoxon rank-sum test was used to compare the in-person and virtual cohorts.

Results

The mean scores for all the survey items evaluating student perceptions increased after each of the virtual IPE Workshops with small to medium effect sizes. Within each profession subgroup, the mean item scores increased. When comparing perceptions between virtual and in-person workshops, the mean item scores before and after completing the virtual workshops were numerically higher however, the effect sizes were very small compared to the mean item scores before and after completing the in-person workshops.

Conclusions

These findings provide support that synchronous virtual IPE learning experiences can achieve interprofessional outcomes by improving student perceptions of interprofessional education and collaboration similar to in-person experiences. This can inform other institutions when considering how to design IPE.