An Interprofessional Clinical Integrations Pilot Program: Integrating Third-Year PharmD Students into Family Medicine Clinics

Purpose: Pilot an interprofessional student placement model by entrusting Doctor of Pharmacy students to deliver value-added patient engagement within interprofessional clinical environments. Background: Beginning in January 2016, pharmacy education standards mandate students actively engage in early patient care experiences with interprofessional teams, thus necessitating new models by which students collaborate with providers in the provision of patient care. Intervention: Between May and August 2016, two family medicine clinics are incorporating 65 third-year pharmacy students into shared medical patient care visits during an interprofessional-provider introductory pharmacy practice experience (IP Provider IPPE) pilot program. Students engage with patients and clinicians by providing value-added interventions such as answering drug information questions, conducting medication history reviews, identifying medication-related problems, and providing medication counseling. Students attend clinic for two consecutive 8-hour shifts after completing a 2-hour pre-clinic orientation. Students return to clinic for two additional hours to orient and hand-off to the next oncoming student. Students’ interprofessional professionalism will be evaluated by the provider using a standardized rubric. Preliminary Results: Students’ experience and performance during the IP Provider IPPE pilot will be described during the presentation. Preliminary feedback from both providers and students indicate this model is mutually beneficial and satisfying for both students and providers. Students are describing frequent opportunities to engage in shared direct-patient care with assigned interprofessional preceptors. Relevance: This pilot demonstrates an effective strategy of expanding interprofessional student training by creating partnerships between practitioners and interprofessional students which are valued-added. We intend to use this strategy to expand clinical interprofessional training to all professions within our interprofessional education program. Future investigation: We will be investigating the reliability of our interprofessional professionalism rubric used to assess students during interprofessional clinical experiences. The value of the interprofessional student’s role within the practitioner team when engaging with patients will also be investigated. Learning objectives: 1) Describe a model for maximizing and sustaining student engagement within an interprofessional clinical practice site 2) Identify opportunities to align roles and responsibilities of interprofessional students which may contribute value to patient care provided by other health profession