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, 5) evaluation, and 6) 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, and 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?