Strategies in Action: Tailoring a Practical Assessment Plan for Interprofessional Education

Interprofessional education (IPE) has continued to grow within health profession education, with a primary goal of preparing learners to work collaboratively to meet the needs of patients, clients, families, and communities. Ensuring optimal assessment for measuring intended outcomes remains a challenge. As assessment is the primary driver of learning, health professions educators must be aware of IPE programmatic assessment best practices, common challenges, and potential solutions to ensure their students can become collaboration ready team members. Assessment difficulties are rooted in many areas that include uncertainty about what to assess and when, logistical challenges of organizing meaningful assessments for large groups of students, limited training and resources for assessment, and the breadth of settings in which assessment can and should occur (e.g. didactic, simulation, and practice-based IPE experiences).Session outline with active learning strategies: A panel of IPE experts from six institutions will engage participants in a workshop to explore best practices, common challenges, and potential solutions. Areas of emphasis will include scaling IPE assessments, adapting assessments/matching assessment modality to varied levels of learners (undergraduate, graduate professional, post-professional), and IPE assessment considerations that span an IPE curriculum (didactic to practice settings). The session will start with a 10-minute welcome/introduction/overview. Each area of emphasis will then be discussed by 2-3 panel members sharing their experience/expertise for 10-15 minutes, followed by 5-10 minutes of think-pair-share discussions among attendees, and 5-10 minutes of audience Q&A/discussion with panelists. Assessment strategy discussions will be from various IPE-related roles to maximize applicability and include considerations for competency-based and/or traditional, learning objective focused IPE curricula. Given the diversity of learners who participate in IPE and IPE program structures, intentional development of an institution/program specific assessment plan is critical to determining IPE success. Workshop participants will be prepared to lead the development of a practical assessment plan for their program or institution.