Milestones and entrustable professional activities: The key to practically translating competencies for interprofessional education?

Competency-based education and practice have become foundational for developing interprofessional education (IPE) and interprofessional collaboration. There has been a plethora of competencies developed in these areas recently, both at individual institutions and nationally; however, their effective integration and thus potential has not been fully realized educationally. Milestones and entrustable professional activities (EPAs) are new concepts and assessment approaches from medical education that provide a way to functionally use and maximize competencies to ensure that competency is attained. They are applicable to learning activities both within the classroom and the clinic, as well as to lifelong learning. This paper defines and describes milestones and EPAs, considers the importance of their application to IPE, and summarizes a future research project that will identify EPAs for an IPE curriculum.

A novel pain interprofessional education strategy for trainees: assessing impact on interprofessional competencies and pediatric pain knowledge.

BACKGROUND: Health care trainees/students lack knowledge and skills for the comprehensive clinical assessment and management of pain. Moreover, most teaching has been limited to classroom settings within each profession. OBJECTIVES: To develop and evaluate the feasibility and preliminary outcomes of the 'Pain-Interprofessional Education (IPE) Placement', a five-week pain IPE implemented in the clinical setting. The utility (content validity, readability, internal consistency and practical considerations) of the outcome measures was also evaluated. METHODS: A convenience sample of 21 trainees from eight professions was recruited over three Pain-IPE Placement cycles. Pre- and postcurriculum assessment included: pain knowledge (Pediatric Pain Knowledge and Attitudes Survey), IPE attitudes (Interdisciplinary Education Perception Scale [IEPS]) and IPE competencies (Interprofessional Care Core Competencies Global Rating Scales [IPC-GRS]), and qualitative feedback on process/acceptability. RESULTS: Recruitment and retention met expectations. Qualitative feedback was excellent. IPE measures (IEPS and IPC-GRS) exhibited satisfactory utility. Postcurriculum scores improved significantly: IEPS, P<0.05; IPC-GRS constructs, P<0.01; and competencies, P<0.001. However, the Pediatric Pain Knowledge and Attitudes Survey exhibited poor utility in professions without formal pharmacology training. Scores improved in the remaining professions (n=14; P<0.01). DISCUSSION: There was significant improvement in educational outcomes. The IEPS and IPC-GRS are useful measures of IPE-related learning. At more advanced training levels, a single pain-knowledge questionnaire may not accurately reflect learning across diverse professions. CONCLUSION: The Pain-IPE Placement is a successful collaborative learning model within a clinical context that successfully changed interprofessional competencies. The present study represents a first step at defining and assessing change in interprofessional competencies gained from Pain-IPE.

Interprofessional education: an overview of key developments in the past three decades.

OBJECTIVE: This paper provides an overview of key developments of interprofessional education (IPE) in relation to its evolution over the past 30 years. METHODS: A narrative review of the salient IPE literature was undertaken to generate key source materials for this paper. RESULTS: Results are presented in four sections that focus on describing and discussing: the emergence of IPE, different learning/teaching approaches; the evidence base for IPE; organizational elements. In addition, to help illustrate these developments, we offer a case example of the work currently being undertaken at our own institution, with a focus on how various IPE developments have been integrated into our organizational priorities. CONCLUSIONS: Based on the results presented, a series of key conclusions for the future development and implications of IPE are outlined.