While not a new concept, Interprofessional Education (IPE) has generated considerable interest in the past several years. IPE involves more than simply having students from various programs taking common classes together. An IPE curriculum is designed to promote an understanding, appreciation and application of the roles, talents and responsibilities of the members of the health care team. The Winter IAMSE webcast seminar series brings together a collection of the leaders and programs that have implemented successful IPE activities. This series will begin with an overview of IPE and how it has grown over the years followed by a perspective on what is involved in developing a successful program. Specific sessions will include: An IPE course incorporating a community-based service learning project, an IPE Honors Colloquium, clinical clerkship IPE experiences, a comprehensive curricular design and a set of IPE activities including the requisite faculty development to make it all happen.

Webinar Description

Case Western Reserve University’s Health Professions Schools are implementing a series of interprofessional workshops that bring together students from the schools of dental medicine, medicine, nursing and applied social science. In this webinar, we would like to share our lessons learned and successes in implementing an interprofessional workshop on obesity for over 500 students in four health professions, done entirely in small groups. Because we wanted to have an interactive, learner-centered focus for the sessions, students worked in one of 46 small, interprofessional groups, each facilitated by a faculty member from one of the four health professions schools.

The webinar will focus on the following elements:

1. central support and clear goals
2. a small, cohesive interprofessional planning group
3. a small group workshop format with activities around relationship building, a common patient experience, review of each health profession’s literature, and reflection
4. evaluation
5. lessons learned

This four-part series is one component of a much larger interprofessional initiative that incorporates classroom, community, and patient care settings. The overall goals for the interprofessional workshops are to bring students together in the small group setting to

1. interact with peers from other health professions schools
2. describe the roles/education for each other’s health professions
3. examine select articles from each profession’s literature
4. appreciate opportunities for collaboration among our professions to improve outcomes for patients/clients/communities

The evaluation data has helped us to address the following questions

1. What do students perceive as salient features of each other’s professions; how do student react to the perceptions of their professions by students from other health professions?
2. What is the nature of the insights that emerge about a topic when learning in an interprofessional group?
3. What opportunities for collaboration do students identify for helping people with obesity?
4. What value do students from four health professions find in interacting together?

Target Audience

DMU faculty and staff. 

​Speakers

• Terry Wolpaw, MD, MHPE
  Associate Dean for Curricular Affairs, Case Western Reserve Univeristy School of Medicine
• Sharon E. Milligan, PhD, MSW, MPH, MS, LISW-S
  Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Associate Director, Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development, Associate Professor, Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University
• Patricia W. Underwood, PhD, RN, FAAN
  Executive Associate Dean for Academic Programs, Associate Professor in the School of Nursing, Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, Case Western Reserve University
• Kristin Z. Victoroff, DDS, PhD
  Associate Dean for Education, Associate Professor Department of Community Dentistry School of Dental Medicine, Case Western Reserve University