Interprofessional collaboration in healthcare is vital to the nation’s health and interprofessional education is of significant interest in the current academic climate and practice environment. Remote Area Medical is a non-profit healthcare organization that partners with community hosts to provide dental, vision, and medical services to medically underserved patients in remote areas of the United States and abroad. RAM mobile clinics have served over 785,000 people since their founding in 1985, providing vital healthcare services free of charge through the volunteer services of healthcare professionals. RAM mobile clinics provide an excellent opportunity for interprofessional collaboration and interprofessional education as learners partner with volunteer professionals to serve the community. The RAM mobile clinic in Gray, Tennessee was first established in 2017 and implemented the innovate utilization of undergraduate and graduate health professional students from the East Tennessee State University Academic Health Sciences Center in student teams. Interprofessional student teams along with precepting faculty are flexible in location and services offered to best serve the needs of the mobile clinic at any given time. Interprofessional student teams work to improve patient utilization of services offered at the event and assist with medication histories and health screens while growing student interprofessional patient care skills in the process. The objective of this research is to describe the impact of interprofessional student teams on patient care at the Gray, Tennessee RAM mobile clinic during the first two years. Data was collected from the years 2017 and 2018 by the student volunteer coordinator then analyzed by student researchers. The interprofessional student teams consisted of 87 student volunteers that were training in Clinical and Rehabilitative Sciences, Medicine, Nursing, Public Health, or Pharmacy over the course of the three-day mobile clinic in 2017 and 109 different student volunteers in 2018. Student teams were precepted by interprofessional faculty and logged 2,332 interventions in 2017 and 1,130 interventions in 2018. The top two interventions in 2017 were Medication Histories and Blood Glucose Screens while the top two interventions in 2018 were Medication Histories and Health Screens. Variation in number of interventions logged and type of interventions logged can be explained by event characteristics that differed between the two years. Student participants commented positively on their engagement with one another and discussions they had to better understand each other’s professions between patient encounters. This research attempts to demonstrate that the impact of interprofessional student teams at a RAM mobile clinic is worth the investment of faculty resources in planning and execution to engage student learning while benefitting the patient population being served. This research also provided a hypothesis for additional research to be conducted around the 2019 Gray, Tennessee RAM mobile clinic.

Collaborative practice in the healthcare system is of global interest to become cost-efficient and adaptable towards health care needs due to more complex challenges and shortages in qualified health workers. Health-sciences education should provide interprofessional education to promote learning for collaborative practice in their curricula. The interprofessional training ward is one form of interprofessional education in the clinical setting. Previous studies in the field of interprofessional education focused on self-reports by students. The focus on students leads to a lack of the supervisor´s perspective in interprofessional education. The aim of this study is to get insides of the supervisor´s perspective on how they perceive their work. This study was conducted with a qualitative methods approach with semi-structured interviews. Main results of this study were in different areas. Power relations between managers, supervisors, and students show a big impact about supervisor´s work satisfaction from appreciation from the managers. Supervisors usually feel appreciated by students but lack of appreciation from managers can lead to distress and decreased satisfaction. Supervisors go through different stages during their work period: First they have low confidence in their job role, after a period of time they are confident, but after a long period of time they can get tired of their work. The conclusion is even though the interprofessional training wards have already a lot of positive aspects, the managers should always remember themselves to support this kind of setting. Without the support of the managers, the whole project decreases its quality and the supervisor’s satisfaction.

Interprofessional student service-learning experiences are integrated into the preventive care of older adult residents of public housing in Appalachia. Receiving a Health Resources and Services Administration grant provided the College of Nursing at East Tennessee State University the opportunity to expand interprofessional clinical experiences for students by partnering with the College of Pharmacy, the College of Clinical and Rehabilitative Health Sciences, and the local public housing authority. Select faculty from each college met and developed a plan to form student teams from all three colleges to conduct in-home comprehensive medical and nutrition assessments and medication chart reviews of high-risk older adults. Following the in-home visit, students and faculty discuss the assessment findings at planned interprofessional meetings. Students present their findings from each discipline's perspective and collaboratively set health priorities and develop intervention strategies and an inclusive follow-up plan. Excerpts from students' reflective narratives discussing the impact of the interprofessional service-learning experiences are shared.

Interprofessional student service-learning experiences are integrated into the preventive care of older adult residents of public housing in Appalachia. Receiving a Health Resources and Services Administration grant provided the College of Nursing at East Tennessee State University the opportunity to expand interprofessional clinical experiences for students by partnering with the College of Pharmacy, the College of Clinical and Rehabilitative Health Sciences, and the local public housing authority. Select faculty from each college met and developed a plan to form student teams from all three colleges to conduct in-home comprehensive medical and nutrition assessments and medication chart reviews of high-risk older adults. Following the in-home visit, students and faculty discuss the assessment findings at planned interprofessional meetings. Students present their findings from each discipline's perspective and collaboratively set health priorities and develop intervention strategies and an inclusive follow-up plan. Excerpts from students' reflective narratives discussing the impact of the interprofessional service-learning experiences are shared.

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Research has shown a strong correlation between oral and systemic disease; therefore, there is an increased need for collaboration between dental and medical professionals. The purpose of this study was to examine the current opportunities that exist for interprofessional education (IPE) at Nova Southeastern University (NSU), the perceived need for IPE for dental and health science/nursing students, the perceived advantages of an IPE program, the features that should be included in an IPE program, and the perceived administrative and financial barriers to increased interprofessional activities. This study surveyed graduate faculty and staff from NSU’s College of Health Care Sciences, College of Dental Medicine, and College of Nursing regarding their views on IPE. The study used the Health Professions IPE Survey. Responses were factor analyzed, which revealed two dimensions: Positive IPE Perception and NSU IPE. There was an overwhelmingly positive response to IPE for dental, health science, and nursing students as evidenced by component one (Positive IPE Perception); however, there was a more negative perception about IPE at NSU as evidenced by component two (NSU IPE), possibly due to financial and administrative considerations. Factor analysis of this data legitimizes the need for future survey development. Future research should examine enablers for IPE by eliciting faculty feedback. Faculty reluctance to engage in IPE activities can be addressed by designing faculty development programs based on Adult Learning Theory (ALT) concepts. Future IPE program development will need to include adequate institutional support, funding, faculty development, and faculty involvement in planning.

Nurses are expected to work collaboratively with other health professionals after graduation; however, most have not been taught to work in teams and are ill-prepared to work in collaborative relationships. Interprofessional Education (IPE) may better prepare nursing students for teamwork. The purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of pre-licensure clinical IPE for nursing students. It was hypothesized that nursing students who participate in clinical IPE have more positive attitudes toward health care teams than nursing students who do not participate in clinical IPE as evidenced by higher scores on the Attitudes Toward Health Care Teams Scale (ATHCTS), Quality of Care/Process subscale and by lower scores on the ATHCTS, Physician Centrality subscale. The theoretical framework for this study was Pettigrew’s intergroup contact theory. A quasi-experimental, nonequivalent control group, after-only design was used for this study. Archived data (ATHCTS) for nursing students who had participated in clinical IPE was used for the intervention group. The ATHCTS was administered to nursing students in control group universities. An independent t test was used to compare group mean scores. There was no significant difference in Quality of Care/Process subscales between groups. Students participating in clinical IPE had lower scores on the Physician Centrality subscale than the control group. Nursing students participating in clinical IPE favored shared leadership while non-IPE participants supported physician authority. Clinical IPE did not improve student attitudes toward quality of care given by teams. However, all participants had relatively high attitudes toward quality of care provided by teams.

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Evidence has been generated and synthesized to support enhanced outcomes in healthcare environments supportive of interprofessional practice. Despite the preponderance of evidence, many health professions education programs do not prepare their students for interprofessional practice. Multiple factors influence the integration of interprofessional education into a program’s curricular offerings including availability of potential partnering professions, conflicting schedules, lack of curricular alignment, and logistical challenges. This manuscript describes initiatives and innovations used to replace health profession and institutional silos with interprofessional and cross-institutional collaboration in Fort Worth, Texas, USA. While the initial point of connection involved the administrators and faculty members from Texas Christian University and the University of North Texas Health Science Center collaborating to create interprofessional training opportunities for health professions students, this collaboration continues to generate new innovations and cooperative initiatives. These initiatives include research projects supported by significant external funding awards and a decision by the leaders of the two institutions to collaborate to develop a new medical school.