ICARE: development of an interprofessional telehealth curriculum to promote Care access and Equity

Interprofessional education (IPE) improves health outcomes and is increasingly required by accreditation bodies for health professionals. Concurrently, telemedicine has become a popular method for providing healthcare. However, its implementation highlights disparities within underserved populations. The Improving Care Access and Realizing Equity (ICARE) Program was developed as a unique eight-week curriculum combining IPE, telemedicine, translator services, and partnership with underserved communities. This manuscript describes the impact of ICARE on IPE core competencies among 215 participating students from across a large academic health center. Most of the students were female (151), with a mean age of 26 years. These students represented a diverse array of fields - medicine (110), public health (51), nursing (40), biomedical informatics (11), biomedical science (2), and dentistry (1). We used the Interprofessional Collaborative Competencies Attainment Survey (ICCAS), comparing pretest and posttest scores. Results revealed a significant improvement in posttest mean ICCAS scores (SD) of 5.60 (19.40) with p-value ≤.0001. Ultimately, students increased their perceived competency in collaboration, roles and responsibilities, collaborative patient-family-centered care, and team functioning.