Meet the Team: Exploring Health Professional Roles and Responsibilities in an Introductory Interprofessional Course

Health professional academic programs require interprofessional education (IPE) to meet accreditation standards and better prepare students for collaborative patient care. The Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) includes the roles and responsibilities of the health professions as a key domain of IPE curricula. A learning module focusing on this domain was developed for an interprofessional introductory course involving 12 health professions. Adaptations to this module over time aimed to enhance content and student knowledge.

Students were assigned to small interprofessional teams throughout the course and completed modules aligned with the IPEC core competencies. The first module highlighted roles and responsibilities. Students submitted assignments related to their health profession asynchronously, prior to a live class session during which they explored their professions in small groups. A debriefing session with the entire class summarized student responses. Facilitators representing all included health professions moderated team discussions and contributed to the debriefing.

During a 2-year period, 1,093 students completed this module. There was a statistically significant improvement from the 2024 to 2025 session regarding increased knowledge of roles and responsibilities of other health professions (P = .0254). Student evaluations indicated an overwhelmingly positive response to content related to the roles and responsibilities of other professions.

This approach allowed students to enhance their knowledge of other health professions' roles in interprofessional work and compare them to their own roles and responsibilities. Enhancement of the roles and responsibilities module provided a strategic approach for interprofessional students to learn about multiple other health professions.