The Student Experience: Co-Creating and Reflecting on a Problem-Based and Clinically Relevant Interprofessional Healthcare Curriculum

As interprofessional education shifted to virtual platforms this past year, challenges of engaging students and encouraging cross-role collaboration arose. Student input was sought out to guide the development of an activity that would serve as the cumulation of a four-session interprofessional education core thread. Adapting a model of faculty and student curriculum co-design, we created a timely problem-based learning activity that was relevant to all health professions: students would be tasked with creating a COVID-19 vaccination clinic proposal.

Small groups of medical, nursing, paramedic and public health students were asked to specifically focus on staff roles and responsibilities and the movement of patients through the various steps to receive their vaccines. The activity promoted engagement, creative design thinking, innovation and collaboration. It utilized brainstorming modalities, such as a virtual whiteboard space, and introducing challenges throughout the session to provide opportunities for real-time problem solving, including the addition of personnel to the clinic and addressing vaccine hesitancy. The goal of the session, as the last in our interprofessional education core thread, was to utilize the lessons learned in previous sessions on communication, values and ethics, and roles and responsibilities to promote effective collaboration and teamwork.

This talk aims to share the students’ experiences and reflections as partners in curriculum design, teaching and learning, and how involving students in the planning resulted in a more engaging and interactive virtual IPE session.