Incentivizing IPEP Through Digital Badging and an IPE Registry

Digital badging allows students and faculty to showcase their interprofessional skills on social media, CVs, and professional networks. These electronic symbols are micro-credentials to document IPEP achievement and mastered skills. The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) initiated interprofessional digital badges to promote, reward, and track interprofessional involvement. The system is directly linked to our institution's IPEP core curriculum and IPEP registry that serves as a repository for approved IPEP activities. Students from our four schools (Medicine, Nursing, Health Professions, and Biomedical Sciences) are awarded an "IPEP Introduction" badge for garnering skills through TeamSTEPPS training in addition to activities that promote the IPEC Core Competencies and enhance the IPEP definition of learning about, from, and with each other. Learners with advanced skills in interprofessional simulation receive an "integration" badge. Those who participate in a team scholarly project that involves the Quadruple Aim are recipients of the "immersion" badge. Faculty receive badges for such skills as master training in TeamSTEPPS and T-3 Train the Trainer. The plan provides flexibility to keep pace with the growth and changes in IPEP curriculum This session will help participants learn how to initiate a badging system and IPE registry at their institutions and how to link it to IPEP activities and the curriculum. We will discuss the benefits of collected and displayed meta data as it relates to IPEP. The talk will provide examples of how we have structured the program, future plans for growth, and lessons learned.