Interprofessional education: Lessons learned from conducting an electronic health record assignment

Ineffective collaboration and communication contribute to fragmented patient care and potentially increase adverse events, clinical errors, and poor patient outcomes. Improving collaboration and communication is essential; however, interprofessional education (IPE) supporting this cause is not a common practice. Most often healthcare profession students are educated in profession-centered silos limiting opportunities to develop effective communication and collaboration practices. Students from nursing, health informatics, and radiologic technology collaboratively populated an academic electronic health record (AEHR) using fictitious case study data. The assignment was designed to address the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses and IPE Collaborative competencies. The objective was to evaluate students' informatics competency, teamwork behaviors, and communication skills while exploring the different roles and responsibilities for collaborative practice after participating in an interprofessional case study assignment. Students gained experience using the AEHR for data entry, analysis, and application increasing their informatics competency. The assignment required students to communicate and actively collaborate as an interprofessional team to achieve the assignment objectives. Clinical errors often occur during care transitions, so simulating this process in the assignment was essential. Nursing and radiologic technology students had to analyze patient data and develop a hand-off communication template supporting patient safety and optimizing outcomes. The assignment required students to work as an interprofessional team and demonstrate how communication and collaboration is an essential component to quality and safe patient care.