Dyspnea in a Hospitalized Patient: Using Simulation to Introduce Interprofessional Collaborative Practice Concepts.

INTRODUCTION: Improved team communication is essential in preventing errors in patient care. Based on TeamSTEPPS concepts, we developed this simulation case scenario to engage learners from various health care professions in interprofessional teamwork. The case was developed for graduating medical, physician assistant, and nursing students with clinical experience, as well as pharmacy students just beginning clinical rotations. METHODS: Learners are evenly distributed into groups based on their professional training to provide an opportunity to function as a team. Faculty receive case materials prior to the day they will be volunteering and receive just-in-time training to refresh medical management knowledge and to prepare them for interprofessional facilitation, debriefing, and team skills. Faculty start by introducing interprofessional teamwork skills based on TeamSTEPPS concepts and providing an activity in which teams compete to create the longest paper chain. Next, faculty run a scenario featuring a standardized patient or high-fidelity manikin developing dyspnea in a simulated hospital setting. Learners can use skills from their profession-specific education as well as theoretical knowledge while demonstrating interprofessional communication skills during the simulation. RESULTS: Overall, 1,475 students have been trained with this resource over the last 5 years. Evaluations completed by learners postsimulation have rated this resource favorably. This resource has equivalent outcomes to two other scenarios also in the workshop series, indicating that using this resource alone will meet the workshop objectives. DISCUSSION: This simulation experience advances the work of interprofessional education in developing increased self-efficacy in learners to be able to implement team skills and work in an interprofessional team.

Interprofessional education in team communication: working together to improve patient safety.

BACKGROUND: Communication failures in healthcare teams are associated with medical errors and negative health outcomes. These findings have increased emphasis on training future health professionals to work effectively within teams. The Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety (TeamSTEPPS) communication training model, widely employed to train healthcare teams, has been less commonly used to train student interprofessional teams. The present study reports the effectiveness of a simulation-based interprofessional TeamSTEPPS training in impacting student attitudes, knowledge and skills around interprofessional communication. METHODS: Three hundred and six fourth-year medical, third-year nursing, second-year pharmacy and second-year physician assistant students took part in a 4 h training that included a 1 h TeamSTEPPS didactic session and three 1 h team simulation and feedback sessions. Students worked in groups balanced by a professional programme in a self-selected focal area (adult acute, paediatric, obstetrics). Preassessments and postassessments were used for examining attitudes, beliefs and reported opportunities to observe or participate in team communication behaviours. RESULTS: One hundred and forty-nine students (48.7%) completed the preassessments and postassessments. Significant differences were found for attitudes toward team communication (p<0.001), motivation (p<0.001), utility of training (p<0.001) and self-efficacy (p=0.005). Significant attitudinal shifts for TeamSTEPPS skills included, team structure (p=0.002), situation monitoring (p<0.001), mutual support (p=0.003) and communication (p=0.002). Significant shifts were reported for knowledge of TeamSTEPPS (p<0.001), advocating for patients (p<0.001) and communicating in interprofessional teams (p<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Effective team communication is important in patient safety. We demonstrate positive attitudinal and knowledge effects in a large-scale interprofessional TeamSTEPPS-based training involving four student professions.

A blueprint of pain curriculum across prelicensure health sciences programs: one NIH Pain Consortium Center of Excellence in Pain Education (CoEPE) experience.

UNLABELLED: To improve U.S. pain education and promote interinstitutional and interprofessional collaborations, the National Institutes of Health Pain Consortium has funded 12 sites to develop Centers of Excellence in Pain Education (CoEPEs). Each site was given the tasks of development, evaluation, integration, and promotion of pain management curriculum resources, including case studies that will be shared nationally. Collaborations among schools of medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, and others were encouraged. The John D. Loeser CoEPE is unique in that it represents extensive regionalization of health science education, in this case in the region covering the states of Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho. This paper describes a blueprint of pain content and teaching methods across the University of Washington's 6 health sciences schools and provides recommendations for improvement in pain education at the prelicensure level. The Schools of Dentistry and Physician Assistant provide the highest percentage of total required curriculum hours devoted to pain compared with the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Social Work. The findings confirm the paucity of pain content in health sciences curricula, missing International Association for the Study of Pain curriculum topics, and limited use of innovative teaching methods such as problem-based and team-based learning. PERSPECTIVE: Findings confirm the paucity of pain education across the health sciences curriculum in a CoEPE that serves a large region in the United States. The data provide a pain curriculum blueprint that can be used to recommend added pain content in health sciences programs across the country.

Interprofessional education in team communication: working together to improve patient safety.

BACKGROUND: Communication failures in healthcare teams are associated with medical errors and negative health outcomes. These findings have increased emphasis on training future health professionals to work effectively within teams. The Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety (TeamSTEPPS) communication training model, widely employed to train healthcare teams, has been less commonly used to train student interprofessional teams. The present study reports the effectiveness of a simulation-based interprofessional TeamSTEPPS training in impacting student attitudes, knowledge and skills around interprofessional communication. METHODS: Three hundred and six fourth-year medical, third-year nursing, second-year pharmacy and second-year physician assistant students took part in a 4 h training that included a 1 h TeamSTEPPS didactic session and three 1 h team simulation and feedback sessions. Students worked in groups balanced by a professional programme in a self-selected focal area (adult acute, paediatric, obstetrics). Preassessments and postassessments were used for examining attitudes, beliefs and reported opportunities to observe or participate in team communication behaviours. RESULTS: One hundred and forty-nine students (48.7%) completed the preassessments and postassessments. Significant differences were found for attitudes toward team communication (p<0.001), motivation (p<0.001), utility of training (p<0.001) and self-efficacy (p=0.005). Significant attitudinal shifts for TeamSTEPPS skills included, team structure (p=0.002), situation monitoring (p<0.001), mutual support (p=0.003) and communication (p=0.002). Significant shifts were reported for knowledge of TeamSTEPPS (p<0.001), advocating for patients (p<0.001) and communicating in interprofessional teams (p<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Effective team communication is important in patient safety. We demonstrate positive attitudinal and knowledge effects in a large-scale interprofessional TeamSTEPPS-based training involving four student professions.