Interprofessional Education

This Cultural Competency course is a spring semester required course for Year 1 PharmD (TCOP) and Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (TouroCOM) students. The goals of this course are to develop both the cultural competency knowledge, values, attitudes, and skills of the students while at the same time inculcate them with the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) competencies of values/ethics, roles and responsibilities, interprofessional communications, and teamwork. The ultimate aim is to graduate pharmacy and medical professionals who have the requisite cultural sensitivities and competence to provide quality, culturally-appropriate, and patient-centered care to patients of diverse backgrounds, as members of multidisciplinary and multicultural healthcare teams, so as to maximize health outcomes and minimize health disparities. The course breaks students into IPE student teams of TCOP and TouroCOM students who work closely during in-class activities and an out-of-class course project. The project requires each team to plan and implement a health promotional campaign or program, based on the Health Belief Model, intended to protect their target population group from their most prevalent disease or health condition of public health importance and present it in class at the end of the semester. The course is practical and interactive, taught by faculty from both schools, supported by guest lecturers from diverse backgrounds, who through case studies and real-life examples engage the students in discussions that aim to educate them about the healthcare needs, access, and healthcare expectations of the populations they represent, while appraising the students of the best practices in providing healthcare to their diverse constituents, such as race, ethnicity, gender identities, and religious backgrounds.

This yearlong coursework given in the fall and spring semester to second-year PharmD students, is held in conjunction with students and faculty of other health care disciplines, including, but not limited to Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, Touro College of Dental Medicine, and Touro College School of Health Sciences. The goals of this course are to provide experiences that will teach students how to work with other health disciplines, use the knowledge of their own profession to contribute to patient care within their scope, effectively communicate with professionals of other fields in a responsive and responsible manner, and to apply relationship-building values and the principles of team dynamics to work effectively with interprofessional team members to enhance care. The IPE activities might include:

• Simulation-based in the medical simulation-laboratory
• Case-based in class in which students work in small groups to compose a care plan for a given patient
• Virtual IPE experience in which groups of students simultaneously log-on to a virtual software platform to address a given patient case.

The activities break students into small interdisciplinary groups in which they address, discuss, and document the approach to their patient’s case. Previous events have included an IPE Escape Room activity with standardized patients, onsite IPE options with various disciplines involved, and virtual IPE activities as interprofessional student groups work to create an assessment and treatment plan for a complex patient case.

The annual Touro College School of Health Sciences Interprofessional Symposium is a required event for third-year PharmD students. Students are placed into interprofessional groups with students from various disciplines including mental health counseling, nursing, occupational therapy, pharmacy, physical therapy, physician assistant, speech language pathology, and social work. In the interprofessional teams, students comprehensively work up a complex patient case to plan how to treat the patient while hospitalized and upon discharge. This symposium focuses on interprofessional collaboration to achieve safe and stable transition for patients into their communities from healthcare settings. Symposium activities includes interprofessional breakout sessions with students and faculty. The goals of the symposium include identifying the value of interprofessional communication in the patient care planning process, understanding the role of the other disciplines participating in the care team, and working in collaborative, interprofessional teams to identify care plans for optimal patient treatment and care outcomes.

In the third and fourth year, while at your clinical practice experiences, you will have additional clinical interprofessional education opportunities which will further your knowledge and application of the PPCP model, gaining a deeper understanding of the patient, health care team, and healthcare systems. Students actively and intentionally engage with various health professionals who work at that clinical site on various projects.