Interprofessional Education

The inclusion of IPE in national and ACPHS domains highlights its critical role in the pharmacy student experience.

National ACPE accreditation requirements include team dynamics, team education and team practice. It also involves core Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) for new pharmacy graduates, particularly in the interprofessional team member domain. The Center for the Advancement of Pharmacy Education domains cover several areas, such as learner development, problem-solving, collaboration, advocacy, communication, self-awareness, leadership, innovation and professionalism. Moreover, the Pharmacists’ Patient Care Process (PPCP) involves five essential steps: collect, assess, plan, implement, and follow up, which includes monitoring the patient’s progress.

Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences has laid out a strategic plan that focuses on five key areas:

• Academic Excellence
• Quality Student Experience
• People and Culture
• Engaging with Communities
• Financial Strength & Stewardship

The College also has a set of core values that guide its activities and interactions. These values include student-centered, integrity, respect, collaboration, community, and excellence. Student-centeredness involves mutual respect and positive and engaging interactions. Integrity is about honesty, trust, principles, accountability, and responsibility, and it requires all members to behave in a way that reflects positively on themselves and the institution. Respect demonstrates professional courtesy and exhibits care, concern, and consideration for others. Collaboration breaks down silos and encourages teamwork, while community involves a shared sense of purpose and identity. Excellence is consistently striving to do the very best work for our students and for all within our campus community. Appreciating our students and colleagues for their work ethic and commitment to excellence.

As per the ACPE accreditation standards, all pharmacy schools must create an IPE student experience.

• Interprofessional team dynamics – All students are expected to show their competence in interprofessional team dynamics. This includes the ability to articulate the values and ethics that underpin interprofessional practice, engage in effective interprofessional communication (e.g., conflict resolution and documentation skills), and honor their interprofessional roles and responsibilities. The didactic and Introductory Pharmacy Practice Experience (IPPE) components of the curriculum introduce, reinforce and provide opportunities for practice of interprofessional team dynamics. Competency in interprofessional team dynamics is then demonstrated in Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience (APPE) practice settings.
• Interprofessional team education – The curriculum enables collaboration and quality patient care by providing students with interprofessional educational activities. These activities help students learn from and work with other healthcare team members and understand their abilities and competencies, as well as their scope of practice. Note that some activities may involve simulations, but not all.
• Interprofessional team practice – As competent healthcare team members, all students participate in providing direct patient care and engaging in shared therapeutic decision-making. They engage in experiential educational activities with prescribers/student prescribers and other healthcare team members. These activities include face-to-face interactions and are designed to improve interprofessional team effectiveness.

Hello! My name is Kayla Wesley, Doctor of Pharmacy Class of 2024.

Interprofessional education is a component of the curriculum here at ACPHS. I also had the pleasure of participating on an interprofessional disciplinary team during my inpatient internal medicine rotation at Albany Medical Center.

As student pharmacists, we played an important role in elevating patient care via collaborative relationships with the medicine team. Our teams were varied with experience, consisting of the attending physician, medical residents, medical interns, and 3rd year medical students. The pharmacy half consisted of our clinical pharmacist preceptor Dr. Engle, PGY-2 pain and palliative care pharmacy resident Dr. Dean, and us P4 student pharmacists. Over the course of our 6 week rotation, the medicine team members rotated every couple of weeks, so we got to experience many different teaching styles and learned how to adapt our communication skills to fit each team.

Each week, us pharmacy students paired up with a new 3rd year medical student. Every day was different with new patients and follow-ups, but the days followed a similar workflow. During a typical day, us pharmacy students would arrive on the floor by 7AM each morning and chat with our respective medical students to see what new patients they had picked up. Some patients could have been admitted to the internal medicine floor from the emergency room, others could have been stepped down from the ICU, or some could have come from another hospital; each patient had a different story. As part of the pharmacy team, we would “work up” our assigned patients which meant consolidating their story to explain why they were here, what acute problems they had, and what medical interventions and medication changes we could do to help resolve those problems. This challenged us to apply the knowledge we had gained from our didactic coursework at ACPHS, and it was exciting to see how everything we have learned could be utilized in practice for real patients.

While working up our new patients, we also made time for reviewing our other patients from the days prior. By around 8:15, our preceptor Dr. Engle would arrive on the floor, and we would take turns presenting our newly admitted patients to her. We would run through the patient’s list of problems and our recommendations for them, whether it was a medication change, initiating or discontinuing a medication, obtaining new lab values to clarify the problem, and more. After solidifying our recommendations with our preceptor, we would find our medical students again and run through our patients together, listening to each other’s perspectives and thoughts, and make a plan for what we would present to the attending physician during rounds.

Most mornings we would also attempt to complete medication reconciliations as part of our patient work-up, which entailed obtaining a list of all the medications the patient takes at home and verifying via different resources it to ensure its accuracy. We would then update the home medication list in their chart so everyone on the care team could see, and then we would compare it with what the patient was receiving during their hospitalization. Medication reconciliations were another great intervention opportunity for student pharmacists to provide recommendations—we could ensure the patient receives the medications they usually take at home or recommend making adjustments to better optimize their regimens.

Rounds started at 9AM and everyone on the team would gather for patient presentations. The medical students would go first presenting their newly admitted patient, and us pharmacy students would chime in to go over the home medications and present our recommendations to develop an effective plan with the team. After presenting the newly admitted patients, everyone would present their follow-up patients from the days prior, and then review the patients being prepared for discharge. The total number of patients under our care varied each day, but was usually between 12-17, and rounds would last 2.5-3 hours. There were countless opportunities for teaching moments during rounds between the pharmacy members and the medicine members, and it was wonderful to see how powerful it really was to be able to share knowledge and gain insight from different clinical roles.

After rounds, our pharmacy team would touch base about what we needed to accomplish in the afternoon for follow-up, then we would head to lunch. Our afternoons had the greatest variability. After lunch, we would return to the floor and start working on any tasks and questions that were not answered during rounds. Follow-up could have consisted of doing pain assessments, doing detective work on medications, checking if certain labs had resulted yet, completing medication reconciliations, and more. We would pop back in to chat with the team about any further recommendations based on our afternoon follow-up and further solidify our plans.

Participating on an interprofessional disciplinary team helped me realize the value in my clinical role as a student pharmacist. By effectively contributing our services to improving patient care and letting no detail go unmissed, we could tangibly feel the trust and respect grow between our team members. It was genuinely a rewarding experience to see the value of our contributions on patient care.

“It is a great learning experience to be able to work with medical students. Honestly, this type of interprofessional training will change the next generation of healthcare professionals. We will be more collaborative patient care providers and that is what the healthcare system needs.”

“Working alongside medical student colleagues has left me with the most meaningful impression overall. I am now a firm believer that to effectively work together as healthcare professionals, we must learn together as effective students. This will definitely affect the way in which I practice pharmacy now having completed this interprofessional experience.”

“Collaborating with a new med student each week challenged our adaptability to work with each other as interprofessional colleagues to figure out how our professions “fit” in with each other while caring for the same patients. Each week we had to find the best workflow with each other, and since everyone has a different style and approach, it was a bit jarring at times to figure out how we could each benefit each other and grow from one another.”

“Through this process, I gained a more solidified sense of other’s roles and how we could use each other as a resource. We learned to adapt to each other’s professions and execute quality patient care within a multidisciplinary team. We improved our communication with each other, settled into a smooth workflow, and executed better patient care, and then started from scratch again with new partners the following week.”

“Not all rotations have a strong interprofessional component or exposure to other health care professionals or students, but this rotation has definitely provided a wonderful interprofessional experience. It is crucial to have IPE experience to better understand the other professionals you work alongside with and find how we each fit into each other like puzzle pieces as the health care team taking care of our patients.”

“The interprofessional aspect of this experience had the biggest impact on me. Learning to work together with medical students provided me with insight into the aspects of patient care that medical students provide versus what pharmacy students provide. Understanding how our roles differed allowed me to maximize my contributions on the team and give recommendations that showcased the value of a pharmacy student. Working with the medical students also challenged me to create interprofessional relationships centered on trust and mutual respect.”

“During my experience in my inpatient internal medicine rotation, I was given the opportunity to work on an interdisciplinary team of medical students, resident physicians, student physician assistants and hospital attending physicians in an effort to build the best possible patient care plans for our patients. My focus on the medications allowed the medical students to focus on the examinations and physical aspects of the patient care, allowing me to use their assessments to guide our recommendations based on the guidelines. This experience was unlike any other experience I have had during my career as a pharmacy intern.”