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IPE at UMMC

Welcome to Interprofessional Education (IPE) at UMMC. This site is a clearinghouse for institutional efforts to promote IPE and activities in the health sciences at UMMC. Faculty, staff, and student from all schools at UMMC participate in IPE.

Our primary goal is to ensure students have the opportunity to learn “about, from, and with each other to enable effective collaboration and improve health outcomes.” We achieve this by providing opportunities for students, from all seven professional schools, to interact and begin learning how to work successfully with members of other health care disciplines.The emphasis on cross-disciplinary training is designed to provide higher quality and more cost-effective health care for patients, families, and communities.

IPE Learning Community

The IPE Learning Community is a longitudinal series of events that take place over the Fall and Spring Semesters of each academic year. Students from medicine, nursing, occupational therapy, pharmacy, and physical therapy participate in four different encounters that focus on the 2016 IPEC Competencies in a setting of team-based pain management. Following the Kick-Off event in October, the remaining three events focus on acute pain, chronic pain, and substance use disorder.

Values and Ethics Simulation

In the values and ethics simulation, medicine, nursing and pharmacy students practice interprofessional communication and management of ethical dilemmas following the admission of a homeless veteran to the Emergency Department. Students share unique and complementary knowledge, skills, and abilities during the simulation to optimize health outcomes for the patient.

Crossing Paths between Pharmacy and Physical Therapy

Pharmacy and physical therapy students work together to learn the roles and responsibilities of each of the disciplines to better understand the intersection of interprofessional teamwork between these professions. Pharmacy students use their full scope of knowledge and skills to help explain medication safety in the setting of polypharmacy in specialty populations such as geriatrics. Physical therapy students on the other hand share their full scope of knowledge and skills to demonstrate appropriate use and indications for durable medical equipment commonly found in community pharmacies. These students learn about, from, and with each other in order to recognize one’s limitations in skills, knowledge, and abilities while understanding how collaboration and integration of clinical care can optimize patient outcomes.

Curicial Conversations in Medication Errors

Accelerated nursing students and pharmacy students work as a team to identify a medication error resulting in patient harm. Upon identification of the mistake, the team explains the error to the upset and extremely concerned patient. Through this simulation, students are provided the opportunity to practice using respectful language appropriate for the given difficult situation and effectively communicating information during this crucial conversation.