Interprofessional education: collaboration or competition? A tale of two experiences.

Successful teams in sports, from youth to professional levels, are a result of many components working well together. Teams conduct strategic meetings and devote practice time to mesh the various parts to improve outcomes, which may be measured as wins. Delivery of quality health care is likewise a function of effective teamwork among individuals providing care. Respect, understanding, and collaboration across professions are key components to successful health care teams. While the concept of strategic meetings and practice to enhance teamwork on a sports team appears obvious, improving teamwork of medical teams can be challenging. One strategy to promote teamwork is via interprofessional education (IPE). The Centre for the Advancement of Interprofessional Education defines IPE as follows: ‘‘Interprofessional Education occurs when two or more professions learn with, from, and about each other to improve collaboration and the quality of care’’ (1). IPE experiences are conducted during formal professional education to provide an opportunity for different professionals to learn together today to hopefully work well together later. IPE is a strategic approach to foster collaboration to ultimately improve patient care in terms of quality, efficiency, and safety. While IPE sessions can provide an effective team-building activity, those designing experiences need to be sensitive to the potential that experiences become competitive rather than collaborative. We share our experience with two IPE modules at Mayo Clinic Rochester with differing results. The first IPE experience, which was a successful collaborative experience in terms of positive feedback from learners and observation by faculty, occurred in the gross anatomy laboratory. For this experience, first year medical (MD) students and first year physical therapy (PT) students were brought together for an IPE experience early in their respective professional programs. The design of this experience has evolved over several years (2). We have found that introducing students in a nonacademic social setting enhances the formal IPE experience. Thus in the early fall of 2013, we held a noon luncheon with a student-led trivia competition to serve as an ‘‘icebreaker. ’’ Teams of PT and MD students, who would later be partnered in the anatomy laboratory, worked together to solve trivia questions and compete against other teams. This activity appeared to enhance the later formal IPE experience, as students had a level of familiaritywith one another at the outset of the IPE session. Soon after the luncheon event, there were two formal IPE experiences held in the gross anatomy laboratory. For the first session, PT students led the teaching and discussion of upper extremity musculoskeletal anatomy to their IPE group, and in the second, MD students led teaching and discussion of the thorax and abdomen. This format allowed the PTandMD students an opportunity to contributewith specific learned skills and knowledge from their respective curricula. It also allowed for sharing between students on topics ranging from dissection techniques to clinical application of anatomy. These two experiences occurred during separate laboratory dissection days. Following each IPE laboratory session, the student teams met in a classroom setting to solve collaboratively the patient cases developed and presented by third year MD students. The cases were designed specifically with consideration of the similar yet distinct background and training of the two groups of students, such that each profession had an opportunity and role in contributing to management of the presented case. Survey feedback from the sessions was very positive, with students reporting value in learning with and about the other profession. Observation and survey results confirm that the experience was positive and collaborative. MD students were impressed by the depth of the musculoskeletal detail expected by the PT students, while the PT students were impressed by the organ system detail and depth of understanding by the MD students. The experience appeared to reduce barriers between the two groups of students, as evidenced by ongoing informal collaboration between the two groups in and outside the anatomy laboratory. Although the MD and PT students physically were separate within the same laboratory space, after the IPE sessions, students were observed frequently visiting the dissection tables of the other profession for informal learning and social visits. A second IPE experience occurred in year 2 of the respective programs. While the anatomy experience has evolved over time, we have thus far only a single attempt with the second INVITED COMMENTARY