The pandemic highlighted the need for a team-based approach to address social determinants of health (SDOH) to improve health outcomes. Addressing upstream factors requires constructive dialogue with community stakeholders, an important skill that most health professions learners do not receive formal training on. Virtual simulations can be used to train learners to plan and execute interprofessional, team-based community interventions. Simulation design must target skills development and…

In healthcare communication, we often focus on the one-on-one relationships between patients and clinicians. Healthcare, however, is a team endeavor with many players and relationships. Clinical and social healthcare professionals learn their crafts in separate programs with sometimes very different training methods and philosophies. However, there is more overlap than differences when it comes to communication skills. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, we created innovative learning…

The COVID-19 pandemic presented delays and cancellations of clinical and fieldwork experiences in practice settings. To ensure timely continuation of program progression for students, interprofessional simulations for entry level occupational therapy, occupational therapy assistant, and nursing students were developed to meet clinical and fieldwork requirements as outlined by ACOTE (2018) and ACEN (2020). Additionally, the INACSL Standards of Best Practice in Simulation were utilized in…

Measurement tools in interprofessional education (IPE) are at their infancy. Establishing the effectiveness of IPE experiences is essential, and the current assessment measures may be subject to various types of bias. Innovations in the assessment of IPE activities should be a priority, including assessing the properties of existing widely used measures. Traditional pretest/posttest measures are believed to measure change as a result of an IPE experience by asking learners to identify…

This Lightning Talk addresses the theme and subtheme of Interprofessional(IP) Education and Assessment through the presentation of the direct observation method, a powerful assessment technique for determining team skills performance. Direct observation has been extensively used in healthcare training to assess individual student procedural skills and more recently interpersonal communication. Patient-centered, collaborative care demands that all health professionals exhibit strong…