The IPE Clinical & Community Placement Experience
The IPE Clinical & Community Placement Experience aims to enhance IPE learning during students’ clinical and community placements by providing tools for students, instructors, and preceptors to integrate IPE intentionally. The ultimate objective is to graduate students who are well-prepared for collaborative practice, capable of leading IPE initiatives, and advancing the Quintuple Aim, which encompasses better health, improved care, enhanced value, a superior work experience, and greater health equity, with the goal of improving healthcare for all.
Students completing all requirements for the Interprofessional Transplant Care Practice Placement will earn the IPE Clinical & Community Badge.
Overall Goals
- Elevating IPE learning for students in their clinical/community placements/rotations by equipping students, and their instructors and preceptors, with ways to intentionally consider and integrate IPE within those placements.
- Preparing students as collaborative practice-ready and as IPE champions to lead IPE efforts in promoting the Quintuple Aim (better health, better care, better value, better work experience, and better health equity).
Learning Objectives
- Develop competence in working with team members to maintain a climate of shared values, ethical conduct, and mutual respect. (Values and Ethics IPEC, 2023)
- Develop competence using the knowledge of one’s own role and team members’ expertise to address individual and population health outcomes. (Roles and Responsibilities IPEC, 2023)
- Develop competence in communicating in a responsive, responsible, respectful, and compassionate manner with team (Communication IPEC, 2023)
- Develop competence in applying values and principles of the science of teamwork to adapt one’s own role in a variety of team (Teams and Teamwork IPEC, 2023)
- Become an interprofessional practitioner through developing/enhancing a simultaneous sense of belonging to own profession and the interprofessional team/community – also known as Dual Profession and the Interprofessional Identity Development. (Khalili, 2020; HPAC, 2019)
Program Overview
- Orientation
- To begin this opportunity, a virtual orientation with interprofessional students takes place before students start their Clinical & Community Placements. During this orientation, students will be prepared with an overview of this experience, what they should look for in terms of IPE integration, as well as being presented with a set of questions for reflective journaling for the IPE placement experiences.
- Check-In
- At the mid-point check-in, students will be brought together, via a virtual meeting, to discuss what they have experienced so far. This mid-point check-in enables students to ask questions and how they can help champion IPE within their clinical and community placements.
- Debrief
- Finally, this experience will end with a virtual debrief which will take place after the students complete their clinical and community placements. The debrief session and discussion is to be held among interprofessional groups of students who will share and compare their IPE placement experiences. This final discussion is to be based on what students experienced, conversations they had, and potentially even a sharing of ways students felt they were able to provide leadership with regards to IPE in their placement.
IPE Transplant Care Practice Placement
The IPE Transplant Care Practice Placement was first proposed by Benjamin Weber (MD Class of 2024 and UW IPE Path of Distinction 2024 Graduate) in Spring 2023. Benjamin Weber started developing this proposal by first proposing potential standards, activities, and readings that would compose this placement. He then reached out to work with Carrie Thiessen, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery, and a kidney, liver, and pancreas transplant surgeon, to further develop and refine this proposal. UW CIPE then worked with Dr. Thiessen and Benjamin to finalize details, align this with the IPE Clinical & Community Placement Experience, and recruit students.
Four UW IPE Path of Distinction Students participated in the IPE Transplant Care Practice Placement in Spring 2024. During the IPE Transplant Care Practice Placement, students spent 10–12 hours exposed to required experiences, which included transplant morning rounds, transplant candidate evaluations, selection committee meetings, learning about organ procurement, and transplant grand rounds. Additionally, students selected elective experiences to help align this placement to their own profession and personal interests, which included working with pharmacists, physical therapists, a xenotransplant experience, as well as a research meeting. Following the format of the IPE Clinical & Community Placement Experience, students engaged in an orientation, check-in and debrief meetings with Dr. Thiessen and UW CIPE Assistant Director, Roberta Rusch, as well as reflective journaling after each experience and a final reflection about the IPE
Transplant Care Practice Placement experience overall. The four students all received the IPE Clinical & Community Badge. 
Thank you, Benjamin, for your work in proposing and developing this opportunity. Thank you to Dr. Carrie Thiessen for your generosity with your time and mentorship to these students.
An additional note and update to share is that this Pilot opportunity was presented at the NEXUS Summit 2024 in September 2024! Congratulations!
Weber, B., Thiessen, C., Wakefield, H., Hess, C., Hikmat, F., Rusch, R. (2024, Sept. 26). IPE Transplant Care Practice Placement: A Pilot Promoting an Intentional IPE Lens in a Medical Specialty Setting [lightning talk]. 2024 Nexus Summit (Virtual).