IPE sessions

Learning in alliance: Transitioning to Online IPE

Interprofessional Education (IPE) breaks educational silos by putting students from diverse backgrounds to be better collaborators by learning with, from, and about each other, thus providing optimal care to patients. An assumption inherent to IPE is that when healthcare professionals work as a cohesive team, quality of patient care improves. Specific to HKU, IPE becomes a means within which future healthcare professionals become collaborative practice ready with important skills related to respectful communication, collaborative decision making, negotiation and respect, teamwork and collaboration, and recognition of differences and diversity (IPECP, https://www.ipe.hku.hk/). This program was participated in by Chinese Medicine, Education, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Social Work students. Four sessions of IPE lessons have been organized in January to March 2020.

This year, the unprecedented challenges linked to COVID-19 pandemic served as an opportunity to scale-up the program to hybrid ten-day “Online asynchronous and synchronous IPE” as contingency option that adapts to pandemic situation. The asynchronous phase affords students with time flexibility to complete a sequence of team activities: preparation (build healthy relations, name the team, discuss pre-class study materials, write multiple-choice questions or MCQs), readiness assurance and team appeal (discuss and answer MCQs using the discussion board), and application exercise (with guide questions covering assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation, and evaluation in case management, teams conducted an independent Zoom meeting to manage the case by formulating an interprofessional healthcare management plan). The synchronous phase affords real-time interaction to foster within- and between-team real-time interaction and collaboration involving teachers and students. During this culmination part, the content experts went live online to interact with the teams in their different locations to process activities. During the break-out session, students reflected on the areas for improvement of their IHMP.

Details can be found on https://www.ipe.hku.hk

A 10-day asynchronous and synchronous online IPE model