A Patient Chatbot to Support Interprofessional Learning

Interprofessional education (IPE) online learning environments address challenges of space, scheduling and at times, faculty resource issues. Artificial intelligence (AI) offers IPE new tools for students’ learning. This project created a patient chatbot for health professions students to interview and as an interprofessional team, develop an interprofessional care plan.Implementation: IPE faculty and computer science colleagues collaborated to create the chatbot. An interprofessional team designed the patient profile: an individual with Parkinson Disease and hearing loss who sustained a fall resulting in a missing tooth and wrist fracture. The patient was being discharged from the emergency room to her home in a new community. The patient profile information was integrated in a web-based framework that utilized generative AI to allow for text-input interaction/interviewing by the students with the patient chatbot. Following the patient interview, student teams completed an interprofessional care plan, addressing two patient goals with specific interventions. The chatbot was used in summer 2024 with audiology, dental, Doctor of Nursing Practice, and public health students. It will be used for medical, nursing, pharmacy, occupational therapy, physical therapy and speech-language pathology students in spring 2025.Evaluation plan: Students completed a survey with items associated with the learning goals. The survey used a 5-point Likert-type scale response to evaluate self-perceived improvement in knowledge/skills. Open-ended questions asked about future application of learning to clinical care and areas for improvement.Outcome(s) and significance: Importantly, the chatbot functioned well and no technology issues were reported. To date, students agreed with improvement in knowledge and skills. Reflection themes reported the importance of practicing: 1) interprofessional collaboration; and 2) holistic patient care. This project demonstrated the effective use of a patient chatbot in an online learning environment to promote health professions students’ appreciation of interprofessional collaboration skills and learning about complex patients.