Use of Student Feedback to Enhance an Interprofessional Education Event
Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of this one time Interprofessional Education (IPE) event was to provide students with the opportunity to learn about the impact of a stroke, the rehabilitation process, the rehabilitation team, and their own profession. The hypothesis was that changes made to the program in the second year based on student feedback would be better accepted by the students and enhance their learning.
Number of Subjects: There were 342 students that participated in the 2 IPE events, 166 in the first year and 176 in the second year. The events were performed over 2 consecutive years with 2 different cohorts of students in physical therapy (172), occupational therapy (109), speech-language pathology (39) and therapeutic recreation (22).
Materials and Methods: The event had 3 separate components: a small group discussion on a pre-assigned case of a patient who had a stroke, a patient panel, and a clinician panel. In the first year of the program, the 3 components were in separate rooms and the students developed questions for the patient and clinician panels prior to the event. In the second year, the event was held in one room, the patients told their story rather than answering questions, and the student came up with questions for the clinician panels at their discussion tables. Students answered pre and posttest survey questions on a Likert Scale as well as a survey on the IPE event.
Results: The students Strongly Agreed response improved on each of the questions from the first to the second year of the program with the greatest improvement on the students’ perceived knowledge about the impact a stroke can have on a patient’s quality of life (+19.72%) and the role of their own profession in the healthcare team (+17.15%). All of the answers to the survey questions taken by students who attended the IPE event improved significantly at posttest (p>.001). The IPE event was well received by the students (89.00% reported that the overall experience was Good-Excellent).
Conclusions: After the first IPE event, the students felt questions for the patient and clinician panels were too general and that some of their questions were not asked. Changes that were made in the second year based on this feedback were that the patient told their own story rather than answering the students’ questions and that each discussion table developed a question for the clinician panel. By making this simple change, the students who strongly agreed that they felt knowledgeable about other disciplines as well as understanding their role on the healthcare team improved by 8.31% and 17.15% compared to the previous year. The aim of the event was to incorporate the Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice and by having so many of the students strongly agree that they felt knowledgeable about other professions after the event it appears that we met our objective.
Clinical Relevance: We found that incorporating student feedback improved the IPE event involving students in occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech-language pathology, and therapeutic recreation with gains made in improving student learning as well as their acceptance of the required IPE event.