A Meta-Teaching Approach for Training Faculty in Interprofessional Education

In this lightning talk, presenters will describe an innovative, meta-teaching approach for training faculty to provide team-based learning experiences to interprofessional groups of health professions students. Faculty development programs have been found to positively change attitudes toward teaching and to facilitate the development of knowledge and skills in teaching methods according to medical educator participant reports (Steinert et al., 2006). However, to date, there are no established guidelines for preparing faculty to teach interprofessional groups of students. Program developers will describe an interprofessional education (IPE) faculty development program aimed at preparing faculty from five academic health science colleges (Clinical and Rehabilitative Health Science, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Public Health) to teach interprofessional groups of entry-level health professions students from 12 programs within these same colleges. The objectives of this program were three-fold: to introduce faculty to the agenda and activities for the IPE student training; standardize IPE facilitation practices and ensure fidelity to the IPE model; and impassion faculty at ETSU for interprofessional education. Attendees of the lightning talk will gain an understanding of how faculty simultaneously become familiar with the student engagement agenda while strengthening their own co-facilitation and debriefing skills. Three tools used for faculty development that support co-facilitation and debriefing skills will be shared with participants: “the Stance” of IPE, the AIR tool for co-facilitation and a debriefing tool. Additionally, presenters will discuss the use of standardized patients, standardized professionals, and standardized students in training faculty. Topics covered in the presentation will include content from the faculty trainings, the co-facilitation and debriefing tools that were provided to faculty, and the meta-teaching techniques that were utilized by program developers to train faculty to co-facilitate in IPE. Evaluation data collected from students and faculty will be shared.