Interacting within an asynchronous online interprofessional education workshop focused on social determinants of health.

BACKGROUND

Meaningful interprofessional education (IPE) involves students from at least two professions interacting to learn with, about, and from one another. Our objective was to describe a novel online approach used to create meaningful IPE within a social determinants of health (SDoH) workshop.

INTERPROFESSIONAL EDUCATION ACTIVITY

This online workshop integrated four different professions' perspectives on SDoH (social-work, public-health, nursing, and pharmacy). Each six-student interprofessional team was assigned a local neighborhood. This week-long workshop had numerous activities (pre- and post-workshop quizzes, a SDoH-primer video, video self-introduction to teammates, a windshield questionnaire with two subsequent clinical cases, a post-workshop reflection, and post-workshop evaluation). For discussion, asynchronous video-based responses were used instead of traditional text-based discussion-boards.

DISCUSSION

Quantitatively comparing quiz scores, students' SDoH knowledge increased with this workshop. Qualitatively from evaluations, most students found this workshop helpful and meaningful. Supporting use of video-based responses, many students' favorite aspect was interacting and collaborating within their interprofessional teams, although some students desired synchronous activities instead. Faculty facilitators confirmed that meaningful IPE interactions occurred.

IMPLICATIONS

In short, students from multiple health-professions learned SDoH-content and, using video-based responses, interacted asynchronously during this online workshop. This report demonstrated one tool available to help facilitate meaningful IPE asynchronously. This asynchronous, online IPE workshop appears to be a promising format to be integrated with other in-person IPE sessions.