Virtual Interprofessional Journal Club to Promote Collaboration in Pediatrics

Background: Interprofessional education (IPE) promotes collaboration among healthcare professionals to ultimately improve health outcomes. Often emphasized in pre-licensure health professional programs, IPE can also be designed for post-licensure learners to maintain effective interprofessional (IP) partnership. For busy hospital-based professionals, virtual IPE opportunities effectively minimize location and timing barriers. We created a virtual IPE journal club for post-licensure pediatric inpatient and emergency department professionals. Our objective was to explore baseline knowledge of IPE competencies and to facilitate interaction amongst team members to foster interprofessional collaboration.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective pre- and post-intervention assessment of an IPE journal club at a tertiary academic medical center. Each one hour journal club occurred over five sessions from October 2020 through June 2021 on a videoconferencing platform. A peer-reviewed journal article was sent via email to the group of 80 interested participants for review prior to the session. Each session included article overview follow by a panel discussion including 3-4 professionals representing multiple disciplines who provided commentary on the article topic. The remaining time was dedicated to open group discussion. Session topics included IP team dynamics, best practice parent-clinician interactions, discharge planning, patients with chronic critical illness, and racism and ableism in healthcare. Participant changes in IP competencies were assessed using a 15-item survey adapted from the validated Interprofessional Collaborative Competencies Attainment Survey (ICCAS). The web-based survey was distributed before the first session and after the final two sessions.

Results: About 20 professionals across 9 disciplines participated in each journal club session with the majority being physicians and physical therapists. Over time, there was a shift in participation according to discipline (Table 1). Overall, the survey results demonstrate improvement in self-reported IP competencies reflecting a positive change in all 15 items of the survey (Table 2). The largest positive shift, +1.0 on a 5-point Likert scale, was seen in the competency: I am able to develop an effective care plan with IP team members. Additionally, as a result of a qualitative review of participant reflections on key takeaways, 3 major themes emerged including: importance of communication and teamwork, value of diverse perspectives, positive impact of a cohesive team on patient care. The satisfaction survey showed that respondents felt the journal club was a valuable experience (mean 4.6 on a 5-point Likert scale).

Conclusion: Implementation of an IPE journal club was highly accepted and improved post-licensure professionals’ self-reported perception of interprofessional competence in all areas evaluated. To facilitate post-licensure IPE, virtual synchronous activities overcome barriers to capture a cross-section of disciplines, but maintaining adequate representation across disciplines can be challenging. Future sessions will incorporate varied session structures such as “hot topic” discussion and case studies and formation of work groups to leverage group ideas to inform quality improvement efforts.