(153) Healthcare Communication and Teamwork: An Interprofessional Case-based Approach to Learning

Objective : To assess students’ perceptions of their ability to engage in effective teamwork and identify effective communication tools for engagement in a difficult conversation post sentinel event.

Methods: Interprofessional teams of pharmacy and nursing students virtually participated in a case study activity in which they confronted a Code Blue communication scenario. Students completed pre-work that included gathering assumptions about the other profession and perceptions on factors that facilitated successful communication between the professions. Then, students completed a worksheet with a case and questions. A debrief led by pharmacy and nursing faculty followed the experience. From the debrief meeting, students identified communication techniques that would assist or hinder the meeting’s progress. Students also reflected on their teamwork dynamics during the exercise. Students then completed a survey, assessing their self-reported ability to identify effective and ineffective communication strategies and techniques before and after the exercise. A Fisher’s Exact Test was used for data analysis.

Results: Seventy-one first-year pharmacy students and sixty-five first-year nursing students participated in the exercise and completed pre- and post-surveys. The distributions of scores before and after the case study for both student self-rating measured categories were statistically different: 1) identifying effective and ineffective communication tools and 2) ability to engage other professions in problem solving (two-tailed, p < 0.0001, and p < 0.0001, respectively). Additionally, 99% of survey respondents remarked that they would recommend this exercise to future students.

Conclusions: In this exercise, students’ self-reported ability to identify communication strategies for effective engagement in a difficult conversation post sentinel event and ability to engage other professions in problem solving improved. Future studies will need to assess students’ ability to utilize effective communication tools in a simulated environment.