Abstract
The 2016 ACPE Standard 11 mandates the inclusion of interprofessional education (IPE) in pharmacy programs. However, challenges exist in the standardized design, delivery, and assessment of an IPE curriculum. We developed and implemented a comprehensive, vertically and horizontally integrated, multimodal IPE curriculum (CIM-IPE) and assessed for student, program, and institutional outcomes.
We established an IPE collaboration, created an institutional infrastructure, and operationalized the curriculum incorporating pharmacy, nursing, and medical students using a five-pronged approach built around 1) a didactic component, 2) high fidelity simulation with manikins with content-emphasis, 3) hospital simulation with manikins with process emphasis, 4) interprofessional case conferences, and 5) a Hotspotting IPE-elective. The 2016 Interprofessional Education Collaborative competencies and ACPE Standard 11 were used to assess outcomes, classifying developmental stages as initial, developing, developed, and proficient.
In seven IPE events distributed across the P1 through P3 years of the CNUCOP Pharmacy curriculum, a high total number of pharmacy, nursing and medical school participants (N = 1799) were repeatedly engaged. Overall assessment data show a high success rate of the integrated CIM-IPE program with mean performance scores of 98 (SD = 13, N = 117) and 95 (SD = 5, N = 67) for the interprofessional case conferences, 100 (SD = 2, N = 117), 95 (SD = 4, N = 67), and 95 (SD = 5, N = 67) for the three simulation based IPE events.
Our curricular and assessment strategies for CIM-IPE outline a stepwise development and implementation blueprint for an inclusive and comprehensive IPE program that is readily transferable to other colleges and schools of pharmacy and other health care professional programs.