Interprofessional education (IPE) is described as two or more disciplines who train together with the common goal of improvement for the patient and also enhancement of teamwork and communication. Healthcare simulation is a great vessel for healthcare professionals to be able to practice interprofessional education through interprofessional simulation. However, interprofessional clinical simulation scenarios are often incredibly difficult to make happen for a variety of reasons. This article by Erin Carn-Bennett, RN, MSN, will discuss interprofessional simulation and include topics such as challenges and potential solutions for these challenges.
Interprofessional Simulation is Top Tier Learning
Interprofessional education with clinical simulation for healthcare professionals of all levels is incredibly important in order to work towards best outcomes for clinical care of patients. Interprofessional simulation allows members of different clinical teams to understand different perspectives and improve their clinical practice. These different perspectives can range from clinical tasks to different communication methods and other team work perspectives. These perspectives would not otherwise be experienced by healthcare staff unless within a clinical event that involved a patient.
An example of how interprofessional simulation can be helpful to address different view points in healthcare simulation is medication and fluid preparation and administration. Medical professionals often underestimate the time that is required for nurses to calculate and draw up different medications or intravenous fluids. There are also time considerations required for the delivery of the medication or fluid to the patient as well for all professions involved.
Dependent on the clinical background of the different individuals from each profession, there can also be language barriers or phraseology which have different meanings around medication charts and administration as well. Interprofessional simulation is an ideal environment to both explore and find out these differences as different clinical teams train together. Interprofessional simulation is an ideal environment to discover, report and rectify latent safety threats that could potentially cause harm to patients.
Interprofessional simulation assists to break down hierarchies and work on different communication and team based skills in particular. Hierarchies are challenged in interprofessional simulation through reflection in guided debriefs. Without safe spaces to reflect on concrete examples such as on communication in a critical event, there is no ability to consider what to differentiate next time in clinical care.
View the Webinar An Interprofessional, Experiential, Performance-based Model for Healthcare Professions to learn more!
Individuals have the ability to experience a more high fidelity clinical simulation experience in interprofessional simulation as this is more close to real life team work in clinical care. This means that there is a more real life educational experience to reflect on and adapt practice for the future. Interprofessional simulation assists to improve patient care through team collaborations and connections. This can assist to improve team and organizational culture in healthcare teams who provide clinical care.
Interprofessional Simulation Faces a Number of Challenges
Such a collaborative and patient focused approach to clinical care makes so much sense to all involved to be prioritised and have hope to be the most common style of healthcare simulation to mutually benefit all involved and the patient. However, interprofessional simulation is incredibly difficult for a number of reasons to make happen logistically. These challenges are faced the world over in order to get interprofessional education established and maintained for clinical teams to be able to train together.
Commonly there are numerous conflicts between clinical teams that can act as barriers to an effective interprofessional simulation program. The main teams that aim to partake in interprofessional simulation are in general medical and nursing teams. However, in some countries there are also a number of other allied health professional teams that this is also applicable to as well. Resource challenges can include enough flexibility within a clinical team to be able to release team members to attend interprofessional simulation.
View the new HealthySimulation.com Community Nursing Simulation Group to discuss this topic with your Global Healthcare Simulation peers!
Other roster challenges can be centered around usual times to train for different teams. One team may usually provide healthcare simulation in the morning for example where their clinical workload is lower and the other may train at the other end of the day for a similar rationale. Some clinical teams have protected education time, but this may be at one of the most challenging times to release staff from unprotected clinical duties. There is huge importance for all teams involved in interprofessional simulation to be able to understand all teams involved challenges around schedules and delivery of this type of training.
The interprofessional simulation challenges may also extend to faculty as well. There may only be limited faculty support for a certain discipline at certain times of the day or even year. There are also engrained educational cultures for each discipline which may date back to undergraduate clinical simulation cultures to either challenge or dismantle.
Potential Interprofessional Simulation Challenges Solutions:
- Advocate for interprofessional simulation with management
- Provide presentations, articles and resources for staff with interprofessional education advocacy and rationale
- Build interprofessional simulation into clinical team culture as soon as able
- Innovative resource allocations: Ask the teams for personal solutions such as open access google sheets to self allocate resources
- Consider the use of technology where able to support interprofessional education such as VR for team training
- Regularly review all teams clinical and flow based demands to find the sweet spot for an ideal time to train together
- Provide feedback for all team members to see easily and regularly around topics covered, feedback and latent safety identification
This article has discussed interprofessional education (IPE) through healthcare simulation. Interprofessional simulation is an incredibly important and essential element to any highly successful clinical simulation program. There are a number of challenges associated with interprofessional simulation delivery, however with much consideration and constant re-evaluation this can be rectified and lead to an increase in interprofessional simulation occurrences.
