Mind Mapping: A Strategy to Promote Interprofessional Collaboration among Health Science Students

Purpose/Background: This presentation will provide participants with an understanding of what mind mapping is and engage participants in a discussion and hands on experience of how mind mapping can be used to prepare students for interprofessional collaborative practice and integrate patient centered models of care. Managing a patient’s plan of care requires health care practitioners to share and integrate data in order to formulate a plan of care. How to engage with other disciplines is often developed during student’s clinical educational experiences. Assisting and engaging students during the academic portion are essential to prepare them for interprofessional collaborative practice. Mind Mapping is an innovative instructional strategy which focuses on integrating information using a 360 non-linear approach. Mind maps require learners to think not only in a curvilinear manner but also use visuospatial relationships which flow from a central concept. For students, using this 360 approach to explore and connect concepts and themes a rich environment for content integration emerges. Mind mapping is emerging as a positive teaching and learning strategy for health science students however there has been limited evidence supporting its efficacy in interprofessional education. Descriptions of Program Mind mapping can be infused at several points within an interprofessional curriculum. Faculty can model for students their own integration of knowledge by creating and sharing their mind maps. Alternately, IPE student groups can create mind maps and thereby engage in self-directed active learning. These options provide rich experiences for students to work on integrating content knowledge across disciplines for the development of robust interprofessional patient-centered care. Preliminary Result on Mind Mapping used in an interprofessional curriculum as well as students’ perceptions will be shared. Conclusion /Relevance to interprofessional education or practice Using a mind maps non-linear approach to learning provides may further aid student’s ability to critically reflect upon and analyze the necessary information, to develop and modify a patient’s interprofessional plan of care. This model of infusion of mind maps can be utilized in interprofessional curricular to prepare students for collaborative practice. Learning Objectives: Participants will be able to: describe the tenets associated with the development of a mind map for IPE discuss a model of infusion of mind maps for interprofessional education and collaborations recognize how to integrate mind maps into their interprofessional curricular model