Impact of Collaborative Inpatient Pairing Between Pharmacy Students and Family Medicine Residents on Perceptions of...

Interprofessional education (IPE) and collaborative practice increasingly inform accreditation standards for pharmacy and medical education, grounded in evidence of benefits to patients and learners. Optimizing models that meaningfully provide this type of practice remains a challenge. This study examines the impact of inpatient collaboration between pharmacy students and family medicine residents on perceptions of interprofessional care.

Pharmacy students and family medicine residents were invited to participate in an IPE experience during their medicine rotation, in which student-resident pairs worked collaboratively on patient care for a block rotation. We used a Student Perceptions of Physician-Pharmacist Interprofessional Clinical Education Instrument (SPICE-2) survey instrument and included an opportunity for open comments by participants. We performed statistical analysis using paired t tests.

We observed statistically significant changes (P<.05) in four of the 10 survey items for pharmacy students and two out of 10 in family medicine residents. Narrative comments provided by both students and residents were positive regarding the IPE experience.

This pilot provides preliminary evidence to support an IPE care model that integrates pharmacy students by pairing them with family medicine residents on an inpatient adult family medicine teaching service. Implementation of a paired-IPE model changed both professions' perception of their roles within the team and appreciation of training requirements. Larger studies could be done to further evaluate the outcomes of this and similar models.