Finding Our Place and Voice on the Interprofessional Team: Uni-professional Preparation of Students for Effective Collaborative Learning

Traditional siloed education in the health professions creates and perpetuates hierarchical attitudes and professional biases.This dynamic is often a barrier to interprofessional learning for students' in some health professions, such as nursing and social work, where they encounter assumptions and stereotypes from students and faculty in other professions that view their own profession as superior to others. This makes it difficult for students to find their place and voice on a team when they are not viewed as equals.Implementation: Much of the literature on student readiness for IPE are conducted post-learning experience and tend to focus on attitudes toward one’s profession and others or on acquisition of the IPEC competencies. There is a gap in the research on best practices to prepare students prior to IPE activities. The Uni-Professional Pre-Briefing workshop was developed to address this gap. The UPPB enhances students’ preparedness for collaborative learning through contextualizing IPE in health profession education; exploring benefits, challenges, and barriers to interprofessional teamwork; increasing understanding of the profession’s role on an IP team; and improving self-efficacy for managing conflicts that may arise from hierarchical attitudes, stereotyping and bias.Evaluation plan: The UPPB was presented to 171 master level social work and 12 nurse educator students in Fall 2024. Mixed-methods outcome data on learning objectives, effectiveness of delivery of the workshop, and interprofessional identity development will be presented.Outcome(s) and significance: Outcome data shows statistical significance on paired sample T-Test for UPPB learning outcomes. 85 - 100% of students agree or strong agree that the delivery and components of the workshop were effective for their learning. 70 - 96% of students agreed or strongly agreed with all items on the extended professional identity scale measuring interprofessional identity development.