CIPE Curriculum Update
The CIPE Steering Committee revisited the CIPE vision during the pandemic and has renewed our focus on educating the learners in the CIPE programs in collaboration with both community and clinical partners.
We aim to improve health and wellness of the greater St. Louis region through interprofessional education, and community and clinical partnerships
The CIPE Curriculum & Assessment Committee, comprised of representatives from each of the CIPE educational programs, continues to oversee refinement of Phase I (now 100% virtual with further incorporation of the Community Health Worker lens), the Standardized Patient Team Experience (now occurring six times yearly) and our Hotspotting pilot. The committee is now turning its attention to development of paired-profession ethics case discussions in Phase II & Phase III activities for programs to use with their learners near graduation.
Updates for the 2022-2023 Academic Year include:
Continued refinement of this curriculum based on learner and facilitator input includes the addition of optional Health Professional Student Leadership Council (HPSLC)-hosted Lunch & Learns to describe the roles of each of the CIPE professions, earlier introduction of the client/patient, and a streamlined project assignment. These Lunch and Learns will offer in-person dialogue that CIPE participants have missed due to virtual programming in response to the COVID pandemic.
The Standardized Patient Team Experience has expanded to accommodate a different mix of professions each of six annual administrations. Depending on the professions involved, the case involves a patient who has experienced a stroke, either at admission or discharge.
Ethics case discussions are being designed to address the Ethics & Values objectives in the CIPE Curriculum Framework. Professions will be paired for common ethics objectives and content specific to their professions. This is based on a successful collaboration between pharmacy and nursing for the past four years. In this session, pharmacy and nursing students work through two pediatrics-related cases which have ethical components to them. Small interprofessional student groups review each profession’s ethical code, discuss which ethical issues are at play in the case, and consider ways to address the issues as a team. A faculty member from each profession is present and helps facilitate discussion with the larger group.
Hotspotting (now known as Community Interprofessional Care Coordination) has grown slowly during the pandemic as we perfect the supervision model. In the upcoming 2022-2023 Academic Year, a Community Health Worker (CHW)-coached model will be piloted.
The CIPE Curriculum & Assessment Committee (CAC) charged the Phase III Workgroup comprised of a diverse group of educators from each program; clinicians, librarian, CHW, and communications expert to consider how learners can be exposed to the CIPE Phase III objectives. Currently the CAC are exploring four areas to pilot in the coming year:
- Interprofessional admission & discharge planning when learners are co-located.
- Reassessment Rounds – Similar to Morbidity & Mortality Conferences in the hospital where learners present a clinical error and proposed solution, these sessions will focus on interprofessional issues.
- Communications exercises – Program leads noted learners need practice with many modes of interprofessional communication including phone and email.
- Research projects – Many programs include research requirements in the last block of their curriculum which could involve an interprofessional component, as well as connections with clinical and community partners.
Intern Spotlight: Victoria Offei-Dua, Washington University MD-MPH Candidate and Torrie Real, MPH
I came to CIPE through my MPH education. While I did not have prior knowledge of CIPE, during my 3 rd year clinical rotations in the MD program, I worked on teams that truly embodied qualities of an integrated interprofessional care team. Those teams demonstrated good communication skills, were focused on the patient, and demonstrated respect toward what each profession contributed to patient care. I enjoyed working on such teams which inspired me to practice and embody those qualities in each care team that I would be a part of in the future. This is what drew me to CIPE for my practicum.
A little bit about me: I chose medicine because growing up in Ghana, I appreciated the one on-one care that physicians offered to patients in their time of need. I wanted to serve people in that way. During my undergraduate years, my knowledge of social determinants of health (SDOH) grew and I realized that I wanted to also work to reform the systems that lead to poor health within certain populations – so I decided to pursue an MPH.
My primary contribution to CIPE was building a curriculum for Hotspotting (now known as Community Interprofessional Care Coordination) in Canvas in collaboration with Hotspotting faculty advisers and other CIPE partners. In creating the Hotspotting course, I learned about the history of Saint Louis and the decisions that have created patterns of persistent inequality that disproportionately affect communities of color. This was impactful because I came to this course wanting to first contextualize SDOH for learners. Though the concept of SDOH has gained broader recognition as important contributors to population health, taking the opportunity to highlight SDOH in the immediate context often makes SDOH tangible/salient to learners. I then created a supplemental module of direct patient care resources from across the professions toward learners partnering with individual patients/clients (i.e., blood pressure monitoring sheets and nutrition education). My hope is that in this course, by applying their unique professional lens and the CIPE tools given to them, learners can learn to work together in interprofessional teams early in the development of their professional identities.
I also took the opportunity to co-facilitate 2 Standardized Patient Team Experience sessions which rekindled my interest in education and teaching. Overall, I have been impacted by the spirit of interprofessional practice and education. Working with CIPE was rewarding, and I am grateful for all the learning and the opportunities to refine and bolster my professional goals. And I intend to continue within the IPE world in my future career as a physician-educator, beginning with the CIPE Student-Resident Teaching Certificate Program [ADD LINK] this summer.
Acknowledgment: I want to give credit to Eliza Hendrix, Washington University OT graduate and former CIPE intern, whose prior work I built on in creating the course.
Gratitude: Thank you to Heather Hageman, Heather Jacobsen, Becky Guillot-Beinke, Ann Marie Mohr, my Spring 2022 CIPE Co-interns, and the Hotspotting Faculty Liaisons for your input on the course.
Congratulations to CIPE Intern Torrie Real on being awarded the 2022 Washington University Master of Public Health Outstanding Practicum Student, Generalist Specialization. Torrie also contributed significantly to the CIPE Hotspotting pilot in AY2021-22.
