Interprofessional education telephone simulation for campus-based pharmacy students and distance-learning family nurse practitioner students

Background: Interprofessional education (IPE) is an essential component of healthcare professions' curriculum but is often difficult to provide due to scheduling issues, cost, different learning formats, and lack of access to other health care professions. To meet the school of pharmacy's need to have IPE with prescribers and the school of nursing's need to provide IPE to distance-learning students, a telephone-based IPE activity was created. The goals of the simulation activity were to provide students a forum to practice communication skills, work to maintain a climate of mutual respect, and forge interdependent relationships with another profession. Interprofessional activity: Each student in a team completed a survey rating the other professional students and qualitative data was collected. Individual care plans were evaluated for appropriateness of therapy, monitoring, and follow-up recommendations. Achievement of the effective communication outcome was evaluated through student survey data, qualitative comments, and concordance of care plans among team members. Concordance was determined based on whether the team was in complete agreement. Discussion: Qualitative data revealed the goals of mutual respect and interdependent relationships between professions were achieved. The majority of students agreed that effective communication was achieved; however, discordance of the patient care plans between team members suggested ineffective communication.