Initial Efforts to Manage IPE during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Reports from the Big Ten Academic Alliance

Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic required higher education institutions to quickly transition to a virtual platform. This was challenging for those involved in interprofessional education (IPE), given the goal that students from two or more professions learn about, from, and with one another. The Big Ten IPE Alliance is a subgroup of the larger Big Ten Academic Alliance. The purpose of this paper is to share the collective experiences of multiple large, research intensive universities in addressing the challenge of implementing IPE programs under the conditions established by the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: To better understand how the Big Ten schools dealt with the transition to virtual learning for didactic and clinical IPE given the COVID-19 pandemic, a subset of representatives from the Big Ten IPE Alliance met to discuss best practices for virtual learning in the IPE realm. Each participating university completed an electronic 14 question survey related to their IPE curriculum during the COVID-19 pandemic from March 2020 thru August 2020 and the responses were analyzed. Results: Four categories were identified as needing to be addressed to develop and implement successful interprofessional didactic and clinical experiences. The categories identified included content/assessment, virtual technologies, faculty and facilitators, and learners. Conclusions/Recommendations: Consider including authentic and innovative mechanisms to deliver IPE experiences that meet the learning needs and accreditation requirements. Interinstitutional collaborations such as within the Big Ten IPE Alliance can be beneficial in assessing current and future best practices in IPE.