Effective team-based care and interprofessional collaboration are essential to reliable, high-quality care and outcomes and accomplishing the Quadruple Aim. Curriculum integration of IPE is part of the professional formation and development of health professions students at Saint Louis University.
Undergraduate Programs
- Athletic Training (B.S.)
- Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences (B.S)
- Nursing (B.S.)
- Nutrition and Dietetics (B.S.)
- Occupational Science (B.S.)
- Physical Therapy (B.S.)
- Radiation Therapy, B.S.
Interprofessional learning experiences start in the freshman year for health professions students. As undergraduates, students earn their professional degree with a concentration in interprofessional practice. All health professions students can also elect to earn a minor in interprofessional practice.
Graduate Programs
At the post-baccalaureate level, the Center offers required courses in patient safety and quality improvement for medical, nursing and physician assistant students.
The Center has supported the development and integration of hybrid courses that include the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Basic Certificate Program in PS/QI with applied skills sessions that provide students from the different professions to apply IHI concepts in case-based activities and team discussions. All students completing the traditional B.S.N. program, and all medical students prior to starting their MS3 clinical clerkships, complete the IHI Basic Certificate Program.
During the clinical training phase of the programs, students participate in an integrated, required longitudinal series of six, interprofessional team seminars. The seminars are case-based and in a Problem Based Learning format where challenges to patient care are addressed by improved interprofessional collaboration, communication, and coordination of care. The faculty-facilitated seminars are designed to have students practice and demonstrate collaborative, team-based behaviors to complete the activity.
The IPTS course began in 2009 and has become a required curriculum for students from seven different professions at the post-baccalaureate level. Students from medicine, nursing, physician assistant education, social work, occupational therapy, and pharmacy from the St. Louis College of Pharmacy, participate in the seminars. Graduate level students and interns from athletic training and nutrition & dietetics each participate in one seminar that has been designed to introduce and integrate a new profession based upon patient care needs.
The course approaches interprofessional teamwork from the perspective of patient safety and quality care and utilizes a model where high-reliability, quality care is the product of individual professional skills, teamwork skills, and effective systems/processes of care.
Students are assigned to small groups and faculty from all seven professions support the facilitation of the small group activity sessions. Brief readings and patient-case reviews are provided to prepare for each seminar, and the IPEC Core Competencies for Collaborative Practice have been embedded so that the students must practice them to accomplish the case outcome goals. Finally, quantitative and qualitative assessments are utilized to determine the student's ability to apply lessons learned from the seminars in a clinical setting.
The concentration in IPP includes the following nine credits of IPE courses:
- IPE 1100: Introduction to Interprofessional Health Care (one credit hour)
- IPE 3500: Health Care System and Health Promotion (three credit hours)
- IPE 4200: Applied Decision-Making in Interprofessional Practice (three credit hours)
- IPE 4900: Interprofessional Community Practicum Course (two credit hours)
Any health professions student may go beyond the concentration and pursue a minor in interprofessional practice. In addition to the courses required for the concentration, students must complete the following courses (for a total of 16 credit hours):
- HCE 2010: Foundations of Clinical Health Care Ethics (three credit hours)
- ORES 2320: Interprofessional Health Outcomes Research (two credit hours)
- IPE 4905: Interprofessional Clinical Practicum Course (two credit hours)
The SLU IPE curriculum is designed to move students from understanding the need for and developing foundational skills in IP practice (IPE 1100) to a broad understanding of the challenges in the health care system to provide equable access to high-quality health care, and coordinated, patient-centered care (IPE 3500). This foundation is then applied in the context of effective team-based care for individual patients (IPE 4200), the improvement of community and population health outcomes (IPE 4900), interprofessional practice in a clinical setting (IPE 4905), documenting the clinical outcomes of interprofessional collaborative practice and the impact on patient care and outcomes (ORES 2320), and the foundations of health care ethics (HCE 2010).