JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The COVID-19 pandemic increased the demand for expedited, flexible virtual care and necessitated an immediate shift from in-person to online education. Faculty rapidly transitioned core in-person concepts to virtual learning, with minimal guidance and without effective evaluation of content delivery in a virtual environment.

Objective:

Despite the increased need for virtual training sessions, a lack of knowledge exists about how to effectively train and assess learners within a cohesive virtual medical team. Although core competencies have been developed for telehealth and interprofessional education, the impacts of early virtual interprofessional education (IPE) have not been well defined. The objective of our study was to explore how early virtual interprofessional education affects collaboration among healthcare students, skills development with remote clinical care, and perception of telehealth.

Methods:

An interdisciplinary course was implemented consisting of 28 students from nursing, medical, occupational/physical therapy, or social work backgrounds. The course consisted of asynchronous and synchronous activities, meeting twice a week for four weeks. Activities included longitudinal telehealth for standardized patient interactions, group discussion, and patient feedback. After the course, a self-survey was conducted to assess student learning.

Results:

Survey results indicated an increase in interdisciplinary understanding and confidence within telehealth settings. Students from medical, nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and social work backgrounds all had a significant increase in familiarity with other professions’ role in telehealth settings (p <0.05). After the course, students rated highly their knowledge of telehealth etiquette, their ability to perform professional roles over telehealth, and their confidence to successfully collaborate with other healthcare professionals in a virtual setting.

Conclusions:

Post-course comments highlighted the value of direct feedback from standardized patients and the value of interdisciplinary education. The positive feedback in both the general rating of how they perceive telehealth as well as working in a collaborative environment demonstrates the positive aspects of working together through virtual platforms. The longitudinal component of patient interactions also allowed for greater improvement in quality of care as students grew more comfortable with working together in a team-based environment.