Fostering Early Interprofessional Collaboration in the Management of Low Back Pain
Purpose:
Interprofessional (IP) practice in the clinical environment is essential to providing effective, safe, high quality patient care. The purpose of this report is to describe an IP session integrated into a physical therapist education program for the management of individuals with low back pain (LBP). The IP team included physiatry residents, physical therapists, physical therapy (PT) students and a psychologist specializing in pain psychology. The purpose of this special interest report is to describe outcomes of an IP collaborative education session including PT students and medical residents and psychology.
Description:
An IP team developed a 4 hour IP session to include: discipline specific lectures, presentation of LBP cases, an IP panel discussion, and problem based learning (PBL) activities. IP leaders fostered IP patient management dialogue within PBL groups. A survey was created and administered to all attendees post-session to better understand the utility and perceptions related to the IP education session.
Summary of Use:
A 10 question survey was sent to 74 participants. Overall, 83.1% of participants rated the session either very good or excellent and 78% of participants believed the IP session contributed to their knowledge of the other profession (extremely well or very well). Survey comments included one resident stating: “meeting and interacting with PT students really created a bridge between the two professions.” Participants found greater value in the lecture and panel discussion (75.7% extremely effective or very effective) over the PBL and small group discussion (58.1%). Overall, 98.7% of participants (strongly agree or agree) that the content covered in the session was applicable to their respective clinical practice.
Importance to Members:
There is a growing need for continued opportunities for future providers, including physical therapists to interact in IP teams, yet many academic programs struggle to provide IP learning experiences in the classroom and in simulation laboratories. Gould and colleagues found that following a short IP workshop, there was an increase in understanding of the roles of other professionals in healthcare and Darlow and colleagues found that even a brief IP intervention can have immediate positive effects.