Engaging Students as Interprofessional Education Facilitators

West Virginia University has a standard interprofessional orientation curriculum (“IPE 101”) for over 600 learners of 16 diverse programs. These core sessions include workshops that include facilitated active learning within small interprofessional teams throughout an academic year. Elevating the future through the next generation is most important to our institution. There was an interest among faculty and students to promote matriculated former participants of the IPE 101 program to become IPE facilitators. This idea began with students in WVU's Medical Students as Educator (MSaE) program, but has grown to also include senior level students from social work and pharmacy.Implementation: Student facilitators are partnered with an expert mentor and complete IPE facilitation training. This opportunity exposes student facilitators to best practices surrounding facilitation, debriefing, and innovative strategies to education. This model also gives expert facilitators the opportunity to collaborate with students who offer a fresh perspective on the current generation of learners.Evaluation plan: A qualitative study is currently being conducted regarding the attitudes, learning, and perceptions upon review of student facilitator reflection essays. Emerging themes include (1) the acknowledgement of differences between teaching and facilitation, (2) the value of collaborating with an expert facilitator, (3) the incorporation of new tools for facilitation and debriefing interprofessional groups, and (4) the identity transformation from learner to educator.Outcome(s) and significance: This model benefits students as well as our institution by expanding the pool of engaged future facilitators, as some student facilitators have continued to facilitate in our program post-graduation. We wish to expand student facilitation opportunities to more disciplines based on our findings. In all, we have found this experience to be enriching for student facilitators as they expand their educator identity while gaining deeper understanding of the IPEC Core Competencies.