U-M case-based course helps students understand roles, gain teamwork skills.
“Incorporating meaningful interprofessional education (IPE) into curricula to better equip students to enter and shape clinical practice can be challenging,” explains Gundy Sweet, PharmD, lead author of the recent paper, Moving from individual roles to functional teams: a semester-long course in case-based decision making, published in the June edition of the Journal of Interprofessional Education & Practice.
Dr. Sweet is the course director of Team-Based Clinical Decision Making (TBCDM), one of U-M’s original interprofessional courses. It has been offered for three years and, collectively, has enrolled over 800 students from the different health-science disciplines. In the course, interprofessional teams of students collaborate in case-based decision making to learn two IPE competencies: understanding professional roles and developing teamwork skills. U-M faculty from dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy and social work teach the semester-long course; they are also co-authors on the new study.
The recent publication summarizes student outcomes for the first two cohorts (2015 and 2016). According to Dr. Sweet, “Pre- and post-assessments measured the students’ knowledge and perceptions of professional roles, individual roles on a team, and overall team functioning. Pooled data from two years of students showed significant improvement in familiarity with the education and roles of each discipline, improvement in individual communication and teamwork skills, and improved team functioning.”
Read more about the new TBCDM paper and its findings.
Browse more U-M IPE publications and presentations.
Browse the IPE courses and offerings.
