Working Group Report (Practice article 2) : Online Interprofessional Education Stepwise Interprofessional Education through Inter-University Collaboration at the University of Tsukuba (2) / 医学教育

@#In the second part of the second report, we introduce the Care Colloquium, an inter-university collaborative educational program between the University of Tsukuba and the Tokyo University of Science. The Care Colloquium is an interprofessional education program that uses PBL (Problem-based learning). In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this program was implemented online using Microsoft Teams, with advance preparation including manual maintenance and communication testing. The same learning outcomes were achieved as the face-to-face implementation. Undergraduate interprofessional education tends to be a large-scale program, and the shortage of faculty and classrooms is challenging, but online education could overcome these obstacles. The development of hybrid programs that use the merits of both face-to-face and online education may lead to the promotion of interprofessional education in the future.

Working Group Report (Practice article 2) : Online Interprofessional Education Stepwise Interprofessional Education through Inter-University Collaboration at the University of Tsukuba (1) / 医学教育

For this second report, we divided the efforts of the University of Tsukuba into two parts. In the first part, we introduced the Interprofessional program, an inter-university collaborative educational program between the University of Tsukuba and Ibaraki Prefectural University of Health Sciences. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, this program was conducted using TBL (Team-based learning) in a large conference room. After the pandemic, this was conducted online (using Zoom). The main changes due to the online implementation were the following five points; (1) online faculty meetings, (2) advance distribution of materials, (3) testing using Google Forms, (4) group work using the breakout function, and (5) simultaneous editing using Google Docs. In the future, we would like to examine the possibility of new educational methods while creating innovations that are possible only through online interprofessional educational programs.

The Interprofessional Education Programs of the University of Tsukuba: / 医学教育

　In the medical education curriculum of the School of Medicine, University of Tsukuba, an interprofessional education （IPE） program has been implemented from the first through fifth academic years as the core program in the “Essentials for Medical Professionals” course. From immediately after admission to the start of clinical training in the senior year, students have many opportunities to interact with a variety of health professionals and to systematically develop competence for interprofessional work.<br>　The School of Medicine and Medical Sciences, University of Tsukuba, consists of the School of Medicine, the School of Nursing, and the School of Medical Sciences. We have step-by-step IPE programs: students from 2 or more professions learn with, from, and about each other. In the first academic year early exposure to IPE is provided by team discussions of students from the 3 schools. In the second academic year the IPE program uses team-based learning （TBL）. In the third academic year, the Care Colloquium （a teamwork training course） is provided. The TBL program and the Care Colloquium are conducted though interuniversity collaboration with the Ibaraki Prefectural University of Health Sciences and with the Tokyo University of Science, respectively. One strategy to improve the effectiveness of the IPE program is interuniversity collaboration with the participation of a larger number of professions.