Abstract

Health care education is an ever changing subject, much like the science it’s based upon. To ensure that students receiving this education continue to understand the roles, responsibilities, and importance of other health-related professions, a peer-based integrative model for learning is essential in the education curriculum. The development of a Problem Based Interprofessional Learning activity addresses the void in working in a multidisciplinary and team-based patient care environment that currently exists in the medical education. For development of this model, students from the medicine, public health and nursing programs were distributed in multiple multidisciplinary groups. Each group was assigned to analyze a clinical case and openly discuss and develop a patient-care plan through a team-based, multidisciplinary discussion. Before and after this session, the participants were required to complete pre- and a post-assessment. After a discussion session, an expert panel was brought to discuss adequate management of the case. Results showed that, in general, students were impacted after the activity in terms of familiarity with the aspect of working as part of an interprofessional team (p = 0.0001; r = 0.47) and in the aspect of training as part of the same team (p < 0.0001; r = 0.62) and an overall enthusiasm for the activity (p< 0.0001; r = 0.52. Students recognized the potential benefits of the activity for improved patient care. This activity provided the initial pillar to further develop a more integrative and collaborative patient care training method. Implementation of this activity to modern educational curriculum would allow students to more easily engage in and understand the impact of a multidisciplinary, team-based approach to patient care.