Elsie Stines, MS, CPNP, right, stands amid students and faculty including President Jay A. Perman, MD, during the interdisciplinary President's Clinic.
The University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) has placed a high priority on interprofessional education (IPE), which is among the priorities of President Jay A. Perman, MD. The University’s Center for Interprofessional Education for the second year has awarded seed grants to encourage faculty members to work together for this purpose. Five faculty teams from multiple schools have been chosen for work to be completed in 2016.
Jane M. Kirschling, PhD, RN, FAAN, dean of the University of Maryland School of Nursing (SON) and director of interprofessional education at the University, congratulates the winners. Here are the 2015-2016 seed grant recipients and amounts:
Sarah Edwards, DO, of the School of Medicine (SOM), $10,000. Debra Scrandis, PhD, PMHNP-BC, of the SON, will collaborate on “Developing Family Partnering Skills.” Students from the School of Social Work (SSW), SON, and SOM, which includes occupational therapy, will develop and use relational skills in partnering with families. Learning will take place during Family Game Night at the Inpatient Child Psychiatry unit of the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC). Students will participate in an online module that teaches relational skills and information about each profession’s role in psychiatric care.
Jill Morgan, PharmD, BCPS, of the School of Pharmacy (SOP), $10,000. Collaborators are Barbara Nathanson, MSW, LCSW-C of SSW; Victoria Marchese, PT, PhD, of SOM; Elsie Stines, MS, CPNP, of the Office of President and of UMMC; and Margaret Martin, RN, BSN, of the University of Maryland Medical System and the President’s Clinic. The latter is a multidisciplinary clinic conducted weekly by Perman, who is a pediatric gastroenterologist, and Stines, a pediatric nurse practitioner, with the assistance of Martin, a pediatric nurse, and faculty members and students from all UMB schools. The project, “I-SPARCT: Interprofessional Students Partnering to Achieve Respect and Collaboration in Teams,” will explore student outcomes of I-SPARCT, a method of interprofessional education learning, related to the student’s knowledge, attitudes and beliefs about interprofessional practice gained during IPE pediatric gastroenterology experiences. Students from six schools on campus will be invited to attend sessions to discuss interprofessional practice and team-based care. They will then complete three consecutive clinic sessions to care for patients as an interprofessional team. A pre- and post-survey will be completed by the students to assess their knowledge.
Eleanor Perfetto, PhD, MS, of SOP, $10,000. Collaborators are Kerri A. Thom, MD, MS, of SOM; Mary Johantgen, PhD, RN, of SON; Jay Unick, PhD, MSW, of SSW; Richard Manski, DDS, MBA, PhD, of the School of Dentistry; and Roxanne W. Zaghab, DM, CKM, and Matthew K. Pickering, PharmD, of SOP. The project, “Online, Interprofessional Approach to Teaching Healthcare Quality and Performance Measurement to Students in the Health Professions,” will develop interprofessional, online, educational lectures to provide those enrolled in a health professional curriculum, including pharmacy, medicine, nursing, dentistry, and social work, an opportunity to increase their understanding and awareness of health care quality and performance measurement. This project will offer an online interactive experience in which professionals-in-training will work through core competencies of the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC). They will gain insight into what will be expected of health professionals when they enter their careers and what demands of quality performance will be placed on them as professionals within their respective organizations.
Barbara Resnick, PhD, CRNP, FAAN, of SON, $10,000. Collaborators are Kelly Flannery, PhD, RN, of SON; Nicole Brandt, PharmD, of SOP, and Kelley Macmillan, PhD, MSW, of SSW. The project, “The University of Maryland, Baltimore Aging in Place Program (UMB_APP) in West Baltimore,” was developed from a long history of interdisciplinary work in geriatrics that focuses on single intermittent programs in which students and faculty from multiple disciplines come together to use case-based approaches for teaching. The goal is to take interdisciplinary education into a work setting and provide team-based care to meet the needs of a local, high-rise senior housing community. This will focus on the clinical component for students in nursing, pharmacy, and social work, either as part of their required clinical coursework or via an independent study.
Kathleen Pincus, PharmD, BCPS, of SOP, and Leila Islam, PhD, LCP, of SOM, $9,800. Collaborators are Harriet Mandell, LCSW-C, of SSW, Sally Snader, RN, BSN, of SON, and Mozella Williams, MD, and Sharon Feinstein, MD, of SOM. The project, “Maximizing Interprofessional Experiential Learners to Minimize Health Care Utilization in a Patient-Centered Medical Home,” will provide an experiential rotation at SOM’s Department of Family and Community Medicine (DFCM). Medical, pharmacy, and social work students will work collaboratively to identify and address the complex medical, pharmaceutical, and psychosocial needs of patients identified as being high-utilizers of the health care system. Students will work as a patient-centered team to identify barriers to optimal medical care and set goals to improve the health of the patients. Students will have the opportunity to reflect in formal debriefing sessions on their experiences at DFCM working as an interprofessional team.
The selection of the five grant recipients was based on an evaluation of proposals that met criteria in one of two categories for collaborative work:
• Interprofessional team-based care: Care delivered by intentionally created, usually relatively small work groups in health care, who are recognized by others as well as by themselves as having a collective identity and shared responsibility for a patient or group of patients.
• Interprofessional education: "When students from two or more professions learn about, from, and with each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes" (World Health Organization, 2010).
Teams consisting of faculty from two or more disciplines were required to propose projects that are practice or classroom focused, with educational and evaluative components employing the IPEC Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice.
UMB launched the IPE center in 2013. Kirschling's co-directors are Heather Congdon, PharmD, BCPS, CDE, assistant dean for SOP at the Universities at Shady Grove, and David Mallott, MD, associate dean, medical education at SOM. The importance of interprofessional education is recognized in the University’s 2011-2016 Strategic Plan.