ABSTRACT
Introduction: Interprofessional education (IPE) is an imperative to prepare pharmacy students for contemporary practice. There has been a significant move by health professions educators to engage students of various professions with one another. Of the four IPE competency domains, there is sparse literature in values/ethics domain. Research Question or Hypothesis: Does guided questions/discussion around COVID-19 case followed by debrief enhance pharmacy and medical students' confidence in knowledge about interprofessional roles/responsibilities and ethical decision making ability? Study Design: Retrospective pre-post survey assessing students' confidence in knowledge about roles/responsibilities and proficiency in making ethical decisions. Methods: Interprofessional teams of first year pharmacy and medical students participated in a COVID-19 vaccine case discussion. In small groups, learners developed a vaccine distribution priority list. Groups presented their recommendations during faculty facilitated large group debrief. Students also engaged in small group discussion in answering guided questions about each profession's roles/responsibilities. Large group debrief provided clarification of roles/responsibilities. Quantitative data was assessed on a Likert scale: Not confident at all(1) to very confident(5). A Fisher's Exact Test assessed the proportional differences. Qualitative comments were collated and thematic analysis was performed using the constant comparison method. Results: 303 students (156 pharmacy, 147 medicine) participated. Self-rating of confidence in roles/responsibilities knowledge improved: -not confident at all/not confident- decreased from 90 to 18 (p<0.001) and -confident/very confident- increased from 83 to 191 (p<0.001). Similarly, confidence in ethical decision making ability improved: 'not confident at all/not confident' decreased from 55 to 9 (p<0.001) and 'confident/very confident - increased from 119 to 204 (p<0.001). Three themes of learning emerged from 266 qualitative comments: knowledge about roles/responsibilities, insights into communication and teamwork, and managing ethical dilemmas. Conclusion: This learning engagement had a positive impact on students' self-perception of confidence in knowledge of roles/ responsibilities and ethical decision making ability. Future studies directly assessing learning in these areas could further validate these findings.