The IPE Clinical & Community Placement Experience
As part of the UW CIPE Experiential Expansion Initiative, the IPE Clinical & Community Placement Experience expansion aims to apply knowledge from IPE learning to the students’ clinical and community placements. The program provides tools to students, instructors, and preceptors to intentionally integrate IPE concepts into practice. The overall 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, and superior work experience, and greater health equity, with the goal of improving healthcare for all. Below are the IPE Clinical & Community Placement Experience learning objectives and the program overview.
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
- To develop competence in working with individuals of other professions to maintain a climate of mutual respect and shared values (IPEC, 2016).
- To develop competence in using the knowledge of own role and those of other professions to appropriately assess and address the health care needs of patients and to promote and advance the health of populations (IPEC, 2016).
- To develop competence in communicating with patients, families, communities, and professionals in health and other fields in a responsive and responsible manner that supports a team approach to the promotion and maintenance of health and the prevention and treatment of disease (IPEC, 2016).
- To develop competence in applying the relationship-building values and the principles of team dynamics to perform effectively in different team roles to plan, deliver, and evaluate patient/population-centered care and population health programs and policies that are safe, timely, efficient, effective, and equitable (IPEC, 2016).
- To 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 and pre-brief with interprofessional students takes place before students start their Clinical & Community Placements. During this orientation and pre-brief, 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 and conversation starters to foster discussion during the students’ IPE placement.
- 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. They will also be provided with a next set of questions and conversation starters to help foster IPE Integration for the remainder of their Clinical & Community placement. This mid-point check-in enables students to acquire and implement knowledge about how they can be leaders adept at championing IPE within their clinical and community placements.
- Debrief
- Finally, this experience will end with a virtual debrief which would 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-integration 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.
WI AHEC CHIP Pilot of the IPE Clinical & Community Placement Experience
The WI AHEC CHIP Pilot is a collaborative effort between UW Madison CIPE and the Wisconsin Area Health Education Center’s (WI AHEC) Community Health Internship Program (CHIP). AHEC CHIP matches college students with an interest in community health to local health departments, tribal health centers, community health centers and community service organizations throughout urban and rural Wisconsin for an eight-week summer internship. Through the pilot, UW CIPE aimed to enhance the students’ experience by providing tools and resources to implement interprofessional principles at their host sites.
UW CIPE staff and IPE PoD student, Janmesh Patel (MD class of 2026), worked together to oversee the pilot. Students were introduced to IPE before the start of their AHEC CHIP program that included an orientation and resource guide to use as they began their placements. This was then followed by a mid-program check in to allow UW CIPE staff and Janmesh to coach students on IPE leadership as well as any difficulties they had faced at that point at their placements. The third meeting was the final debrief session which allowed the group to reflect on the role of IPE in their community health settings, and what role they may have had in IPE integration at their site. Forty-two (42) AHEC CHIP students representing the North Central and South Central AHEC, participated in the pilot. Students were given the opportunity to complete an assessment prior to and upon completing the program. This allowed them to gauge their initial understanding of IPE and compare it to their growth post program completion.
One example question from the pre/post survey:
I understand the benefits of interprofessional collaboration in improving client/patient outcomes.
And another example: I have gained greater appreciation of the importance of a team approach.
In addition, we included a programmatic evaluation for students to complete. One such example of a question students were asked was:
Did the IPE integration achieve the program goal of: 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?
100% of the thirty-one (31) students respondents shared Yes, IPE learning was elevated through this program.
Student comments included:
“I really liked being able to take what I learned in these sessions and apply it to my internship host site. It was a great way to practice what I was learning and look for ways that IPE was present in the work that I was doing with my mentors.”
“I am grateful I had this opportunity to not only go through my internship at my site, but also be a part of this highly structured IPE learning program. I took a lot of notes during our weekly webinars, and they gave me lots of ideas and food for thought. I hope that this program will continue, and future interns will get to participate in it!”
In addition, we asked students to complete an IPE Personal Reflection Journal. These written journals helped students guide their observations, promote critical thinking about IP learning, and give them an opportunity to reflect on the ability of IP team members to work collaboratively with one another. A sample statement from a student journal exemplified this:
“As a student member of the team I spent a great deal in a learning capacity, engaging in 1-1 conversations with residents, professionals, and other IP members on topics that I was in the process of learning about. This gave me the room to explore unique perspectives and inform a larger, more developed understanding of rural mental health and the unique challenges it poses.”
All CHIP students who participated in the program and completed a reflection journal, received an IPE Clinical & Community Badge!
The lessons learned through the IPE Clinical & Community Placement Experience in partnership with the AHEC CHIP Pilot have been fruitful in learning more about how the UW CIPE IPE Clinical and Community Placement Experience can be improved as well as what has been impactful on IPE learning. Students were able to apply many of the concepts that we discussed during our sessions to their sites. However, some students remarked that the content was a bit dense and mainly focused on IPE in the hospital (clinical) setting vs. community setting. We will incorporate these suggestions into the curriculum to make the IPE lessons and examples more broadly applicable to public health and community settings.