Interprofessional Learning (IPL) innovation through community site assessments: The faculty of health sciences students' and facilitators' reflections

Interprofessional Learning (IPL) prepares and upskills health service providers to function optimally in their collaborative care role. Expanding IPL to communities outside of traditional institutional and clinical settings is critical. We aimed to document the students' and facilitators' reflections on an IPL experience through community site assessments. This was a descriptive qualitative case study in which students and facilitators were assigned to multidisciplinary teams, to conduct community site assessments. Data were collected from both students' and staff's reflections on the activity. A total of 401 students and 4 academic staff facilitators participated in 22 community sites. The main themes that were generated were; an emerging sense of advocacy, appreciation of their socio-economic status and multidisciplinary collaboration within the faculty. Exposure through community site assessments is recommended to strengthen the multidisciplinary collaboration among faculty academic staff and to prepare undergraduate students to become a collaborative practice-ready health workforce within and outside institutional and clinical settings.