Dave Plough
Welcome back to Collaborative Conversations. I am Dave Plough, your co-host, and I am joined by your other co-host, IU IPE Director Dr. Barbara Maxwell. Hey Barbara. So today, we are speaking with IU IPE -

Barbara Maxwell
Hi everyone.

Dave Plough
Curriculum Director, correct? Dr. Zach Weber and he's going to be joined by the IU School of Nursing's Tanya Coltrain. And Barbara, go ahead and tell me what are we talking about today?

Barbara Maxwell
Yes.

So today, gonna be hearing from Zach and Tanya about the work they've been doing in embedding interprofessional learning throughout their curriculum for nursing and for pharmacy. They've both done a really fantastic job and they're gonna have a conversation together about kind of the way they've been thinking about that for Tanya, how they're doing that with very high numbers of learners for Zach, doing it in the pharmacy school, he's actually at Purdue University for pharmacy. So as Dave, as you said, our sports rival, and he's on that course now. and indeed even worse, So he's kind of a hybrid between us and Purdue.

Dave Plough
Yeah, our interstate rival.

Barbara Maxwell
But conversation they're going to have today is really about what it takes. I think there's a lot of people struggling with what does it take to not only have a core curriculum, which we're fortunate enough to have here at Indiana University, but what is it to also on top of that really get that embedded with your uni professional curriculum?

And how can you use other activities, other opportunities that you get within your own curriculum and in partnerships that really matter with others you're likely to work within the workplace that can enhance and reinforce and really strengthen that interprofessional learning that the learners have through a core curriculum addressing coordination, collaboration, and team working. And so

Both of them have worked really, really hard on that embedding element. And so it'd be great to hear from Zach and Tanya about the processes they've used, because I think they'll be really, really useful to others.

Dave Plough
Yeah, and you've done a great job of teeing up what they're going to cover, but I do want to add this is a very robust conversation and as a result they went much longer than our usual episode runtime. So we've actually cut this one up so it's going to be in two parts. This is part one and again since all of our episodes are available right now as you're listening or watching however you're consuming this product.

Part two is also available. So if you listen to the end of this one and you immediately want to just go ahead and listen to the rest of their conversation,

you can do so. It's part two with Dr. Zach Weber and Tanya Coltrain. Or if you want to break it up, maybe you decide you've heard Zach's voice a little too much and you need something else beforehand. You can listen to any of our other episodes. And with that knowledge, I'm going to go ahead and let Zach.

take it away from here.

Zach
You know, first and foremost, we know that IPE experiences are part of the accreditation standards for many health science professions.

And so obviously that gives kind of a programmatic requirement to make sure that we include these for our accreditation standards and to make sure that we're meeting that. But then even within our own programs, we know that training our students to be collaborative ready team members upon graduation is extremely important because we know that that obviously provides a standard of care that can improve the lives of people and populations in practice. And so.

Just as important as it is from an accreditation standpoint, I think it's even more important just because of the service that we will ultimately provide when our faculty and our students get out into practice and help serve our communities and our patients. as you think about the importance of including IPE into our curriculum, Tanya, I was just wondering if you had any other thoughts about kind of why it's important to you and to your school and your students.

Tanya Coltrain
Absolutely. One thing that I have really enjoyed bringing to my whole time that I've been teaching and wanted to get into academia for this reason, to get there a little bit earlier, to help them understand the importance of IPE. I teach in our first semester of the nursing school and I really impart on them, this is a job you can't do alone. Whether it is nurses with nurses, nurses speaking with physicians.

talking with the pharmacy, the pharmacy has to get us our medications so we can actually give them medications. The doctors have to write the orders for you to be able to fill them, right? I mean, there is literally nothing that you can do in this career without the help of others. I'm happy that the school sees that as such an important part of what we talk about. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing, their new BSN have a whole...

section for interprofessional and making sure that we're meeting those standards. So it's very important to the school. And I also will take an opportunity whenever possible. There's a physician that I work really values education he received from nurses as a new physician on the unit. So he comes and talks to our nursing students, which I absolutely adore.

One thing that he really spends a lot of time on is talking about trust, talking about why it's so important that we not only work together, but trust each understand each other's roles and knowing when I'm going to need help from him, when he's going to need help from me to be able to get things done appropriately. he'll actually like, he'll tell this to the students and I've seen him do it before on the unit. He walks around the unit and he'll in the morning kind of look at who's,

working with him that day and say, Tanya's here. I know that she's going to come to me with any needs, right? So I feel confident in her skills and knowing that she'll reach out to me. This person I don't know as well. And so it's not that I don't trust them, but I need to build that trust and check in on them a little bit more often. So I love that we have that have this interprofessional education as students.

where they can learn to build that trust in a safe environment. And that's really me and our nurses who are kind of jumping in, hoping to build those relationships.

Zach
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Yeah, and so well said. And I think it's so important to talk about that aspect of trust. And I know even for my pharmacy students, when they're out in practice, it's something so important for them to be able to, again, be able to build that trust with their colleagues and to integrate into those teams. But I know that it can be a bit of a daunting prospect for them to do that when they're early in their careers and are in the role of a student. And so obviously, that just, again, speaks to the importance of why we can help train our students to do that while they're in

Unfortunately, though, despite that importance, we know that given how hectic and how busy our curricula are for our students, it can be just so difficult to be able to identify how can you even include these types of experiences in your curricula. And so that's what we wanted to talk a little bit more about today, perhaps, are some of the strategies that we've used within our different programs for me at the College of Pharmacy and for Tanya at the School of Nursing.

of how we've kind of integrated these our curricula in multiple places and in different ways. And so I'll just start to maybe Tanya with you, if you wouldn't mind just sharing a little bit about what does kind of the structure of IPE look like within the different nursing curricula. And I mean that just because I know that you have different degree tracks and programs within your school, you have different admission cycles. And so maybe if you could just provide a little overview of kind of logistically, what does that structure look like for you?

Tanya Coltrain
for it's a good struggle, right, is that we're constantly admitting. So we have admission cycles in the fall and in the spring for our traditional students. We also admit in the summer for what we call our accelerated BSN students. So they already have some kind of bachelor's degree and now they want to get a BSN in nursing as we admit 480 BSN students a year.

And that's quite an undertaking, So part of what we do is our collaboration with the IPE Center to be able to have those experiences where our students are with other students and learning that curriculum alongside people that they're going to work with when we all get into the clinical setting. So that is a big part of how we structure and plan to make sure

that IPE experiences are seen throughout the curricula. We also have a class, and it's the class that I teach and why I love this so actually called professionalism in collaborative is just giving us the basis, right? How do we work as a team? What are those team concepts? talk about TeamSTEPPS, which is a kind of language that we can all speak together, certain tools, certain communication tools.

that all healthcare professionals can learn together. Those are things that we embed right into the curriculum. And then hopefully when they have those that understand the importance, when we go to these IPE settings and we're with other students, or when we go into the clinical we have our IPE experiences where you're actually a multidisciplinary rounds at the bedside.

they're able to see those concepts that we talked about in class or the things that they practiced in their IPE sessions in the hospital setting.

Zach
that's great. And I love it how you have those opportunities both in the classroom setting and in the real world practice setting. And I'll just share that at the College of Pharmacy, we really have kind of those same opportunities, but they're just embedded and integrated a little bit differently. And so I think one of the great opportunities we've been able to have there is to actually have an IPE specific classes that are threaded throughout the Doctor of Pharmacy curriculum. And we actually have five of those classes with our students participating in one IPE course per semester.

for the first four semesters that they're in that doctor of pharmacy program. And so that would be the first and second professional years of the four year program. And then they also have an additional opportunity for their fifth IPE class that is embedded within their third professional year. And then of course we have some longitudinal IPE assessment and opportunities that happens when they're out on rotations for their final fourth professional year. And so.

That's been a really great opportunity for us because I think there's several advantages that we have when you might have that opportunity to have IPE specific courses if it happens to fit within your structure. And so for us, it really helps for the students to have a strong, I'll just say kind of visual element, meaning that they can kind of see these IPE courses on their schedule and on their plan of study. And it makes that piece of IPE just as important running alongside all of the other pieces that they have within their curriculum, whether it be their other core classes.

their elective classes, their experiential coursework. And so again, IPE is another element or another curricular element that runs alongside of those. We also have a graduation requirement because each of those IPE courses carries a credit load associated with it. And so again, from the student's perspective, they have a graduation requirement that's specifically tied to IPE and we want them to be able to understand that importance of how that is. And then similarly, it just allows me as the IPE director to...

manage a lot of the logistics just a little bit easier because I can have my own course rosters, I have my own course website, you know, and I have all of those kind of behind the scenes things that allows me to just track the students being enrolled in the courses, the experiences that we offer. And then we also have the opportunity to move both in the didactic space and to work in the didactic space with some of those IPE courses in the P1 and the P2 years for my students. But in the P3 year, their IPE course is actually co -enrolled.

with their experiential education course or their clinical practice experience that is during that P3 year. And so again, I think it's a great opportunity for our students to see that trajectory of moving from those didactic or classroom -based IPE opportunities to then aligning their IPE experiences with their real -world practice or experiential opportunities. it just shows that.

IPE progression and growth across our curriculum. So I think, you know, as you described, and as I've been able to describe in our curriculum, you know, there's more than one way to do this, right? We all know that our curriculum are all very unique within our programs, but I think that's so important as you either start or look to integrate or to expand perhaps the integration of IPE within your curricula is just to think broadly about what that looks like and what best for your program and your curriculum. Is it something where embedding these different experiences with the different classes?

Tanya Coltrain
Mm -hmm.

Zach
is something that's going to work a little bit better, or could there be the opportunity to add new classes as well? So just something to keep in mind. And I think, again, based on our experience, both of those have been proven very successful for us and our students and our programs. And so when you think about those IPE experiences, there's kind of two main types of IPE experiences I'll say that I have in my coursework. And I think, Tanya, I'll be curious to get your perspective on this as well. And that is,

Zach
what I would consider to be kind of your core IPE experiences and those be required for all students to participate in that provide a lot of foundational elements, foundational knowledge, skills, attitudes, behaviors that we want to make sure all of our students have an opportunity to engage with. But then we also some additional or supplemental IPE experiences that are available to different cohorts of students for one reason or another, whether it be because of a particular area of interest because it be maybe that we're limited on size or capacity. Maybe again, there's another reason why somebody might want to engage in the different IPE opportunities. And so I was wondering perhaps Tanya, if you could share a little bit about kind of what perhaps maybe some of your core IPE experiences versus some of those additional or supplemental opportunities

Tanya Coltrain
Yeah, so I think it's really important that we're able to have some structure, right? Especially when you're talking about students who are admitted all year long and what that looks like to make sure that everyone gets the experiences that we know are valuable and to their education. there are going to be things that arise sometimes organically too are

really those defining moments. And I've seen that happen. So from a core we have and collaborative practice course. We have a leadership the students are actually going into the environment leaders. So they will be with charge nurses, day shift coordinators, managers, directors, and they're going to those higher level meetings where they're meeting with different types of professionals.

Those two things I think are coursework standpoint really valuable to us. And then what we hope that they get, and again, is it going to kind of happen organically? If not, we're gonna try to seek it out. Are those moments in the clinical setting? Because our nursing students are in that clinical setting so we have those experiences where they're able to go to a multidisciplinary huddle?

or they're able to experience a a patient is in distress and they get to see the group of professionals work together. So I love when we have those clinical experiences and then can debrief with them after. So they may not know what they're seeing or really understand the process that they're we can go back and help them to understand everyone's role.

or fill in any gaps that they have there. So I love when that happens organically. Part of our capstone, which is kind of the last part of we have the nursing students who are just side by side, a nurse at the bedside. And they work their shifts, they're with for those 12 hour days, if they have 12 hour days, 12 hour nights, if they're there on nights. And so they get to experience it all. And we actually have...

an assignment for them to needs to be interprofessional. So those nurses help them find the partners that they would need to complete that project. So I do think that we have things that are going to be seen as coursework and are important, they can then see that in real life and see that happen, that's when I see it come to life. That's when I hear them say,

Tanya, I remember you talking about these rounds and how important they were, and I can see why. Like, I can see that the family was involved. I can see that the physician truly understood the needs of the patient after the nurse explained think those things need to go hand in hand. we just talk about it but we don't see it in action, I don't think it brings it home in quite the same way.

Zach
Absolutely, yeah, and same for our students. And like I said, we have examples of both core IPE experiences and then again, some of those additional opportunities as well. And so for us, really the primary components of those IPE courses that I mentioned are the ones that serve as the core IPE opportunities that are a requirement for all pharmacy students to participate in. And so we can be assured that at least by the time our students get out into practice, there is some kind of common denominator, if you will, in terms of opportunities.

that all students will have had by the time they get out into practice. But then again, we certainly have a good portion of our students that have some additional IPE opportunities in a multitude of settings. And some examples of where those things can occur are related to some of the student organizations or professional organizations that we have not only in the College of Pharmacy, but across

they do things like health fairs and community outreach events and other service oriented projects around campus. we have cohorts of students that really interact directly with other health profession students that we have around the Purdue campus. so that's kind of an additional experience to build upon some of those IPE opportunities. We've also had experiences over the years that have collaborated with other community partners. And through those collaborations, then we've been able to open up opportunities.

based on mutual interest and need for students to kind of jump into some of those additional for example, we did one that was centered around HIV AIDS education. we had students that were particularly interested in that topic area that had a chance to engage within some community organizations that worked in that space. We've had other ones that have done some work within the LGBTQ plus community. we have other students that have a lot of interest in providing service to the LGBTQ community. And so.

Again, that's another opportunity. That's an additional experience on top of that. just as you might think about integrating these IPE elements across your curriculum, I would encourage you to think broadly about those two elements, meaning what are the core opportunities that if we have the opportunity for all of our students to participate in those, what does that look like and how can we achieve it, recognizing that it's likely going to involve a higher number of learners and a higher number of participants. And so it's going to bring in just some.

different logistic considerations compared to some of the additional or supplemental opportunities where maybe the level of learners might be a little bit different in terms of numbers. But at the same time, there's still some logistics and planning, to be able to bring all of those partners into one location at the same time. And so obviously, yeah, go right ahead, please.

Tanya Coltrain
what a valuable thing that we have with the IPE Center at IU to be able to have those big experiences where we do have so many learners. But also we have offerings like the cycles of addiction seminars that we have where we bring out a panel of people to talk about what families are dealing not just.

not just the patient themselves or the person themselves, but the family is dealing with the issues that surround may not resonate with everyone, for certain learners maybe don't feel that that resonation with something that happened in the they may say, I know someone who went through this or this is a topic that's really important to me. Like you were saying, if.

you know, if HIV AIDS is where you feel like your passion what an amazing opportunity to give them those spaces where they can really say, I want to know more, not just because someone's making me, right? Not because it's part of my curriculum, but this is a topic that's really important to I love when we have these different opportunities that maybe will...

give someone that space to say, now I understand why it's important because it's relating back to something I truly care.

Zach 
Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And I'll just echo what you said about collaborating with the IPE Center at IU. And so even at Purdue, at the College of Pharmacy, we are our very key partners with the IPE Center at Purdue. And obviously, they present us with a number of opportunities that we wouldn't have otherwise. in terms of being able to expose us to other professions and programs that we might not have at our particular campus location, obviously to help with just the development and implementation of different IPE experiences, helping to manage.

Importantly some of the logistics of just what does it take to actually pull these things off and to get people together in real time? Which is often the most difficult piece of this
Dave
that is all from Zach and Tanya. We thank you both for taking a part of this podcast series. Again, this is a super interesting way to handle a podcast where we're just bringing in as many people as we can that work in these different areas that are all interlocked in one way or another. It's, I think it's pretty neat. I don't know. I'm going to cut that part, but go ahead.

Barbara Maxwell
that I was just going to say then they don't have to listen to us all the time. They get to hear some other voices and some really experienced voices and the particular area that the podcast focuses on, which is great.

Dave
Yeah, it is great. And if you want to hear more or see more from the Interprofessional Practice and Education Center or more about interprofessional practice education as a whole, we do as much as we can to help share the information that we can. We do it at our website, ipe .iu .edu. We do it on our social medias. We're available on what used to be Twitter. We're available on Facebook, but mostly...

We're really active on our LinkedIn and you can find us there by searching up the Indiana University Interprofessional Practice and Education Center.

Barbara Maxwell
Yeah, and we're really keen to hear from you. If you have ideas for podcast information, topics that you'd like us to kind of share with you, we can bring those experts together and have those conversations for you. So please just let us know your ideas you might have for future podcasts by emailing us at ipectr at iu .edu.

Dave
that will do it for this episode. So thank you for listening and we will catch you next time on Collaborative Conversations.