Developing Leadership and Patient Advocacy Skills Utilizing a Virtual Interprofessional Simulation
The purpose of this experience was to expose pharmacy and nursing students to leadership and patient advocacy skills within an interprofessional team. The experience allowed students to immerse into an interactive environment during remote learning through a virtual simulation. It also assessed students’ self-perception of leadership ability, patient advocacy skills, understanding the role of other professions, and interprofessional communication skills pre- and post-simulation activity.
Interprofessional teams of pharmacy and nursing students participated in a virtual simulation interacting with a standardized patient. The scenario was designed to invoke situational leadership and patient advocacy opportunities. Students completed pre-work, which included literature readings on patient advocacy and transition of care, and a pre-survey. The pre-survey included the self-rating of each student’s confidence in four items: leadership abilities, patient advocacy, understanding the other profession's role, and interprofessional communication skills. A debrief led by pharmacy and nursing faculty culminated the simulation experience after which students completed a post survey measuring the same four pre-survey items. A Wilcoxon signed rank test was used to analyze the data.
Thirty-six second-year pharmacy students and thirty-seven senior nursing students participated in the experience and completed both pre and post surveys. Student self-rating increased in all four categories: confidence in leadership ability (3.37 vs 3.82, p < 0.01), patient advocacy (3.77 vs 4.2, p < 0.01), understanding the other profession’s role (3.34 vs 4.04, p < 0.01), and interprofessional communication (3.57 vs 4.17, p < 0.01). Additionally, all post survey respondents remarked that they would recommend this experience to future students.
Participation in an interprofessional virtual simulation between pharmacy and nursing students focused on leadership development and patient advocacy demonstrated a statistically significant increase in students’ confidence in their ability of leadership, patient advocacy skills, understanding the other profession’s role, and interprofessional communication. However, further studies with larger sample size are warranted to assess generalizability of these findings.
The experience provides an opportunity to improve patient care through offering insight into healthcare resource limitations, patient concerns and preferences, and consideration of students’ roles as healthcare professionals to advocate for patients. It also exposes students to a virtual setting, which is vital in the current healthcare climate and offers an option when remote learning is required. Other health profession programs can replicate and tailor the experience to their learning needs. Some exposure to clinical rotations and healthcare settings prior to the simulation is ideal to maximize effectiveness of the experience.
