How Do Classroom-Based Interprofessional Education Interactions Influence Medical Students' Clerkship Experiences?

Classroom-based interprofessional education (IPE) has been shown to improve medical students' understanding of IPE competencies, but less is known about how those skills apply in clinical environments. This study assesses an IPE session's influence on medical students' interactions with cross-disciplinary colleagues during their pediatrics clerkship.

Medical, nursing, and pharmacy students in pediatrics clinical rotations participated in an hour-long, virtual classroom-based small-group IPE activity in which they answered questions about a hypothetical case of a febrile neonate's course of hospitalization. Each student received answers to these questions given to students from other professions, such that answering the questions from the perspective of their own profession required the students to share and gather information from other students in their group. After the session, students completed retrospective pre- and postsession self-assessments of their achievement of IPE session objectives, which were analyzed using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. They also participated in focused interviews that were analyzed qualitatively to explore the session's influence on their clinical experiences.

Medical students' retrospective pre- and postsession self-assessment ratings differed significantly, indicating improvement in students' IPE competencies. However, interviews revealed that less than one-third of medical students applied IPE skills during their clerkship due to lack of autonomy and confidence.

The IPE session's influence on medical students' interprofessional collaboration was minimal and suggests that classroom-based IPE has limited impact on students' interprofessional collaboration in the clinical learning environment. This finding suggests the need for intentional, clinically integrated IPE activities.