Dr. Denise Ludwig and colleagues from Grand Valley State University presented a recorded session at the 2020 Lilly Conference. I watched the presentation today and learned about interprofessional case studies. Their presentation described interprofessional health/medical case studies with groups with up to fourteen different professions. The scenarios have defined goals and align with core competencies for interprofessional experience. In 2020, the group had to quickly move their in-person event that includes professionals from several institutions, to a completely remote experience. Fifteen faculty educators helped transition the event into a virtual one in nine days! An event based on teamwork and hands-on simulations was converted into a virtual experience using Blackboard Collaborate and other tools. I didn’t realize the importance of interprofessional education and team training, and it makes sense how critical teamwork and interprofessional interactions are in healthcare. The WHO endorses core competencies for interprofessional education! The presenters described the core competencies put forward by the IPEC 2016. The focus of the event is student learning and interprofessional collaborative practice and communication. During their in-person events, the group uses “jargon cards” team members can use to pause conversations and explain jargon to other professionals on the team. In the virtual experience, groups typed “jargon” into the chat. This was one of several examples they described of challenges and modifications the group made to conduct the event virtually. It was interesting to hear what technical challenges participants faced and how they communicated using GoogleDocs and discussion boards. These interprofessional teams need to work together effectively, and interprofessional education pedagogy mentioned in the presentation highlighted how these opportunities help reduce stereotypes of professions and increase communication across different disciplines. The Grand Valley group did an amazing job converting an already highly structured event into an online format. Pre event information, pre briefings, recaps, and facilitators were among many logistical elements. They surveyed the almost four hundred participants and identified themes that will help further improve remote event delivery. This presentation made me think about the opportunities to do interprofessional high-throughput case studies with data analysis intensive steps. It would be really interesting to include clinician scientists, statisticians, bioinformaticians, and molecular biologists in events to try to solve challenging case studies from our HITS network. I bet the experience would benefit participants and help improve the cases! I’ll have to keep this in mind for our next HITS workshop, maybe with an interprofessional team challenge!
