With today’s complex healthcare challenges, providing the best quality patient care includes the integration of healthcare providers across disciplines. As such, it’s essential that – from the beginning – healthcare education includes interprofessional education (IPE). To ensure students receive that collaborative experience, Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions (RMUoHP) provides structured opportunities to collaborate with students and practitioners from across disciplines, including those outside of the University.
One IPE opportunity at RMUoHP has been through a valued partnership with Roseman University of Health Sciences (South Jordan, UT). Roseman University and RMUoHP have shared goals to increase quality healthcare by providing exceptional healthcare education.
For the last three years, RMUoHP students and faculty have participated in the Roseman University Research Symposium. Additionally, this past month RMUoHP physical therapy (DPT) and physician assistant (MPAS) students collaborated with Roseman University pharmacy (PharmD) students in an interprofessional education seminar at RMUoHP’s campus in Provo, UT.
Roseman University Chancellor, Dr. Martin Lipsky, spoke about the partnership formed with RMUoHP, “We value the partnership we’ve shared with RMU. We have worked together in small ways to build cultures of interprofessional education and research and we hope to work together even more! We believe this is an excellent opportunity for both institutions and our students.”
Interprofessional Education in Research
For the third year in a row, professors and students from RMUoHP were chosen to present their research at the fifth Annual Roseman University Research Symposium. At this year’s symposium, only 76 out of 136 submissions were selected to be featured. Among these were submissions from RMUoHP faculty, including Dr. Hina Garg, Dr. Jeff Lau, Dr. Jessica Immonen and Kelsey Stevens. These faculty presented on a wide range of topics from anatomical features of the knee deemphasized in anatomy teaching to the effect of video feedback on physical therapist student performance.
In addition to presenting at the symposium, Dr. Garg and her student co-presenter (Andre Scholes) received third place overall with her poster: Psychometric Comparisons of Computer Adaptive Test and Standard Balance and Walking Scales to Assess Functional Mobility in People With MS. Dr. Garg stated, “My DPT student, Andre Scholes and myself, were proud to receive the award for our project which inquired the clinical utility of various MS-related patient outcomes.” This is not the first time Dr. Garg has won an award at the Roseman Annual Research Symposium. The first time she presented at Roseman (2017), Dr. Garg won first prize for her clinical poster presentation: Adaptations in gaze, postural sway, balance, and participation after home-based training in persons with MS.
Dr. Garg feels the symposium benefits both RMUoHP faculty and students, “I think this symposium is a great platform which allows the RMU faculty and students to present their clinical research and demonstrate its impact on patients’ lives. This symposium also allows the faculty and students to learn from and engage with peers from other disciplines which ultimately enhances the interprofessional patient-centered care.” Dr. Garg also noted, “I was pleasantly surprised by the international participation in the Roseman Research Symposium this year (I think they had 19 international abstract submissions), which added to my global understanding of the dental, pharmacy, and other healthcare-related advancements as well as current challenges.”
Additional poster presentations from RMUoHP featured at the fifth Annual Research Symposium collaborations with colleagues at the University of Utah:
- Meniscofemoral Ligaments: Under Emphasized in Anatomy Literature Despite Being Evolutionarily Preserved and Surgically Repaired. Kelsey Stevens (RMUoHP); Jessica Immonen (RMUoHP); Les Gilmer (RMUoHP); Alexa Albin (University of Utah).
- Femoral Chondral Lesions Increase in Severity With Aging Equally Between The Sexes and Present in Comparable Locations. Jessica Immonen (RMUoHP); Matthew Zdilla (University of Utah).
Interprofessional Education Seminar
College of Pharmacy students from Roseman University traveled to the RMUoHP campus to participate in the RMUoHP IPE Seminar. These students had the opportunity to collaborate with RMUoHP’s DPT and MPAS students. Community members were brought on campus to play the part of the standardized patients as the students teamed up to provide care to the patient and develop a plan for long-term recovery.
RMUoHP Doctor of Physical Therapy faculty Dr. Miriam Cortez-Cooper said, “Having the [Roseman University] PharmD students collaborating on a patient case adds another vital member to the healthcare team to prevent hospital readmission and optimize quality of life. Students have an idea about what expertise another healthcare professional has, but the extent of their value to the team is realized when they hear from the healthcare professional him/herself and can ask questions. PAs and PTs each take a pharmacology course or two but with different purposes. Having a PharmD student whose entire curriculum is pharmacology on the team, opens up the possibility of additional therapies or the optimization of current ones. Also, as students, they feel freer to ask questions of each other because they recognize that they are all still learning.”
Students who participated in the IPE Seminar commented on knowledge gained by working on a healthcare team through the seminar:
- “Diversity of perspectives and priorities in patient care increases the quality of that care.”
- “[I learned] that I am not in this alone and there are many others who will be able to give valuable insights.”
- “[I learned] other professionals can help fill in your knowledge gaps.”
- “I think just getting real life examples of what each healthcare provider does was the most beneficial and interesting thing to me. I wasn’t sure how we would all work together or what the other students knew.”
There was also a lot that the students learned about students from other disciplines:
- “That everyone is qualified to treat the patient and may do so in different ways. It’s a good way to learn from them.”
- “That they have valuable specialized skills that enhance patient care.”
- “I never really knew exactly all that physical therapists can do and I really enjoyed learning about their different methods of patient evaluation and treatment.”
- “They were willing to cooperate and tag team physical exams. We do a lot of similar exams, but the PT students definitely go into more depth with MSK exams and measuring things.”
This type of collaboration is important in the healthcare field. Dr. Cortez-Cooper noted that, “Although our roles and responsibilities may overlap, we want students to view this as a good thing – knowing that another health care professional ‘has their back’ and that they can be counted on to reinforce/support the healthcare plan.”
