Alignment of an interprofessional student learning experience with a hospital quality improvement initiative.

Assessment of interprofessional education (IPE) frequently focuses on students' learning outcomes including changes in knowledge, skills, and/or attitudes. While a foundational education in the values and information of their chosen profession is critical, interprofessional learning follows a continuum from formal education to practice. The continuum increases in significance and complexity as learning becomes more relationship based and dependent upon the ability to navigate complex interactions with patients, families, communities, co-workers, and others. Integrating IPE into collaborative practice is critical to enhancing students' experiential learning, developing teamwork competencies, and understanding the complexity of teams. This article describes a project that linked students with a hospital-based quality-improvement effort to focus on the acquisition and practice of teamwork skills and to determine the impact of teamwork on patient and quality outcome measures. A hospital unit was identified with an opportunity for improvement related to quality care, patient satisfaction, employee engagement, and team behaviours. One hundred and thirty-seven students from six health profession colleges at the Medical University of South Carolina underwent TeamSTEPPS® training and demonstrated proficiency of their teamwork-rating skills with the TeamSTEPPS® Team Performance Observation Tool (T-TPO). Students observed real-time team behaviours of unit staff before and after staff attended formal TeamSTEPPS® training. The students collected a total of 778 observations using the T-TPO. Teamwork performance on the unit improved significantly across all T-TPO domains (team structure, communication, leadership, situation monitoring, and mutual support). Significant improvement in each domain continued post-intervention and at 15-month follow-up, improvement remained significant compared to baseline. Student engagement in TeamSTEPPS® training and demonstration of their reliability as teamwork-observers was a valuable learning experience and also yielded an opportunity to gather unique, and otherwise difficult to attain, data from a hospital unit for use by quality managers and administrators.

An online alcohol and oral health curriculum for dental students.

Regular heavy alcohol use can cause or worsen several oral health disorders and is associated with complications during and after dental procedures. Dental student education should provide detailed knowledge of these issues together with skills needed to detect and counsel patients with unhealthy drinking patterns. This project was designed to develop and evaluate a five-module, online program to teach dental students about alcohol and oral health, systemic and oral biological effects of heavy drinking, required changes to treatment protocols for heavy drinkers, reliable methods of alcohol screening, and ways to provide heavy drinkers with brief interventions. Results indicated that the online program resulted in significant changes in knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. This online format could easily be incorporated into an already crowded dental school curriculum, with students learning the material at their own pace and in their own available time.

Preliminary development and evaluation of online tobacco and alcohol modules for dental students.

Tobacco use and heavy alcohol consumption are major risk factors for the development of oral and pharyngeal cancer (OPC). Detection and modification of these risks by dentists are keys in preventing OPC. While dentists are encouraged to screen patients for tobacco and alcohol use and educate them about the oral health risks they pose, dental students receive little formalized training in this area. This pilot project was designed to develop and evaluate two online training modules for dental students: one on tobacco and oral health risk factors, and one on methods of alcohol screening. Results indicated that online tobacco/alcohol education for dental students is feasible. The modules resulted in meaningful improvement in dental students' knowledge of tobacco and alcohol use as well as alcohol screening methods. The alcohol module resulted in statistically significant increases in intention to screen patients for alcohol use and in comfort level in performing alcohol screening.

How we changed from paper to online education: Teaching Immunization Delivery and Evaluation.

This article discusses meeting the challenges encountered in changing a paper-based, interactive immunization delivery curriculum into an online, self-paced format. The program, TIDE (Teaching Immunization Delivery and Evaluation), was developed through collaborative efforts of medical educators and content experts with initial funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Ambulatory Pediatric Association and the Medical University of South Carolina. We summarize the efforts of the development team to create interactive case scenarios, provide ready access to resource materials and an audit tool for assessing the immunization rate of the learner's clinic or practice, and meet the rigorous requirements of awarding continuing education credit. Data based on more than 100 doctors' and nurses' evaluations indicate a trend toward higher overall ratings of the online version than the paper version (88% online vs. 76% paper reported module as very good or excellent). As the TIDE program is evaluated, the team's goal is to incorporate instructional methods to increase relevance and learners' opportunities for 'learning by doing.' Future plans include extending online office assessment tools to encourage use for continuous quality improvement, and providing a mechanism for learners to share their techniques for obtaining and maintaining high immunization rates.