Putting Interprofessional Leadership Development at the EPIC-Center of Student Preparation for Practice
Purpose: Meaningful interprofessional education experiences (IPE) that emphasize leadership development require more than classroom discussions or single contact activities for sustainable results.1 IPE opportunities should challenge physical therapy students to assume ongoing responsibilities that can develop the essential leadership skills required by the IPEC Core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice.2,3 Project EPIC (Empowering Patients through Interprofessional Collaboration) created interprofessional experiences where students continually worked together to lead a health care delivery teams. Leadership expectations included performance and reflection.Methods/Description: Project EPIC began in 2013 and has involved 83 faculty and 377 students from 13 professions. These included physical therapy, medicine, nursing, public health, social work, occupational therapy, pharmacy, dental, physician assistant, speech language pathology, nutritional sciences, dental hygiene, and audiology. Each college selected eight students for the two semester EPIC project. These students, along with faculty facilitators, formed interprofessional teams. Teams attended a workshop addressing team dynamics, and conflict management and participated in a simulation session using trained patients and debriefing. All teams completed their training prior to offering pro bono evening services at a community clinic. Each team prepared to handle all administrative and clinical service responsibilities at a community clinic once monthly for four months.Results/Outcomes: Teams practiced the leadership skills of negotiating responsibilities, enforcing time management, and directly identifying and addressing any team conflicts during the actual patient care and at the end of the evening in a formal debriefing session. Team members employed face-to-face discussion and social media (within HIPAA restrictions) to identify and communicate about problems or inefficiencies. As Project EPIC evolved, so have methods of capturing student feedback.4 These include minute papers, adaptations of life circle diagrams, facilitated final debrief session, and an online survey. Student feedback has been overwhelmingly positive about the experience.Conclusions/Relevance to the conference theme: Our Leadership Landscape: Perspectives from the Ground Level to 30,000 Feet: This project's leadership emphasis prepares physical therapy students for practice.5 Placing the evening Project EPIC program in an active clinic took the experience beyond a purely academic exercise. The students' leadership decisions could not center only on the needs of their team but must be responsive to input from the fulltime clinic staff related to use of resources, patient satisfaction reports, and feedback provided by support staff who assisted with scheduling for evening clinic sessions. Through informal interactions, observations by facilitators, and debrief after each clinic session, students examined the influence of leadership on their clinical service delivery.References: 1. Interprofessional Education Collaborative. (2016). Core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice: 2016 update. Washington, DC: Interprofessional Education Collaborative. 2. Sargeant J, Loney E, Murphy G. Effective interprofessional teams: “Contact is not enough” to build a team. Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions. 2008; 28(4): 228-234 3. George, L., Bemenderfer, S., Cappel, M., Goncalves, K., Hornstein, M., Savage, C., Altenburger, P., Bellew, J., & Loghmani, T.M. (2017). A model for providing free patient care and integrating student learning and professional development in an interprofessional student-led clinic. Journal of Physical Therapy Education, 31(2), 54-66. 4. Thompson, B.M., Bratzler, D.W., Fisher, M.J., Torres, A., EPIC Faculty. & Sparks, R.A. (2016). Working together: Using a unique approach to evaluate an interactive and clinic-based longitudinal interprofessional education experience with 13 professions. J Interprofessional Care, 30(6), 754-61. 5. Lie, D.A., Forest, C.P., Walsh, A., Banzali, Y., & Lohenry, K. (2016). What and how do students learn in an interprofessional student-run clinic? An educational framework for team-based care. Medical Education Online, 21(1), retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4976304/