Development and validation of the IPEC Institutional Assessment Instrument

UNC Libraries · 2025-04-01

Teaching Happiness - An Interprofessional Wellness Mindset Course for Health Professions Students

American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education · 2025-11-01

Objective: The number of health professions students experiencing feelings of depression, anxiety, and stress is disproportionate to the general population in the US, especially after COVID-19. The University of Florida (UF) implemented an evidence-based interprofessional course to alleviate mental health challenges and empower students' well-being. The course is a one-credit course for health professional students from colleges at UF. The goal of the course is to equip students with strategies to promote well-being.

Exploring Generative Artificial Intelligence to Enhance Reflective Writing in Pharmacy Education

American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education · 2025-04-30 · 7 citations

The integration of generative artificial intelligence (AI) holds the potential to impact teaching and learning. In this commentary, we explore the opportunity for AI to enhance reflective writing (RW) among student pharmacists. AI-guided RW has the potential to strengthen students' reflective capacity, deepen their autobiographical memory, and develop their self-confidence. This commentary presents examples of how AI can be utilized to enrich RW and includes a sample prompt aimed at facilitating student self-reflection. We explore how integrating AI-facilitated RW assignments into the pharmacy curriculum can help students develop detailed examples for self-reflection and gain exposure to the potential uses of AI in their professional development and career advancement.

A Feasibility Study to Assess Virtual Patients Authenticity on Building Confidence in Students’ Clinical Decision-Making

UF Journal of Undergraduate Research · 2025-11-05

There is limited access to real patients during healthcare training, presenting a critical need for realistic, scalable simulations to develop students’ clinical reasoning skills. This study investigates how LLMs-supported virtual patient interactions impact healthcare students’ confidence in clinical reasoning and decision-making. We developed a web-based framework featuring a photorealistic patient named Laura, guided by a large language model dialogue. After the interaction, students completed surveys assessing their confidence, perceived authenticity, and cognitive engagement. Our research project has two primary aims: (1) How confident do students feel in making clinical decisions after interacting with an LLM-supported virtual patient?, and (2) How do user engagement (dialogue turns) and perceptions of the simulation relate to confidence gain in real patient interactions? Preliminary results reveal that the authenticity of the interaction significantly predicted students’ reported confidence gain. These findings suggest that virtual patient simulations can positively impact the users’ confidence– offering insight into the future integration of virtual educational tools in healthcare education.

An Exploratory Study of Medical Marijuana’s Impact on Patients With Chronic Pain Beyond an Individual’s Level of Function: Implications for Life Care Planning

Journal of Life Care Planning · 2025-12-01

Studies examining the efficacy of medical marijuana show limited evidence of its therapeutic potential and narrowly focuses on how medical marijuana improves level of functioning and ignores other key aspects of health-related quality of life. As life care planners consider disability beyond level of function, this article provides considerations for medical marijuana as a potential treatment to improve quality of life. The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of medical marijuana beyond the level of functioning among individuals with chronic pain. A direct content analysis was used to examine semi-structured interviews about medical marijuana use and experiences among individuals with chronic pain. Five themes were analyzed within the data: health impact of medical marijuana, cost, quality of life, social support, and accessibility. Three subthemes emerged from the data that were not initially predicted in the direct content analysis: opioids and addiction, social media and travel. Participants experienced an improvement in quality of life because of medical marijuana, and described its use as an opioid replacement in treating chronic pain. Results from this study provide a context for life care planners when considering medical marijuana as a treatment option for individuals with disabilities living with chronic pain.

The intersection of Interprofessional Education and One Health: A qualitative study in human and veterinary medical institutions

One Health · 2024-06-29 · 15 citations

Interprofessional Education (IPE) and One Health are two common and overlapping frameworks for teaching collaborative practice. IPE is common at human medical institutions, while One Health is more common in graduate and veterinary programs. The connection between IPE and One Health is still being explored both in scholarship and in real-world professional settings. This prospective, qualitative research study examines the intersection of IPE and One Health at institutions that are members of the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) One Health Alliance (COHA). COHA consists of veterinary schools partnered with medical institutions through the National Institutes of Health CTSA funding mechanism with the specific goal of advancing the understanding of diseases shared by humans and animals. Twenty-four interviews were conducted with professionals across eight professions. Subjects noted that some of the biggest barriers to IPE education were awareness, accessibility, efficacy, and implementation beyond the classroom. Competency across multiple institutions and a consistent, validated evaluation tool were noted to be lacking. Interviews highlighted a lack of a shared mental model for IPE and One Health across the medical professions, major hurdles for implementation in professional curricula, and a disconnection between bridging IPE and One Health to the workforce and global challenges. Future work in this area may be focused on assessing the IPE and One Health offerings beyond COHA institutions, giving a more holistic understanding on how IPE and One Health are being deployed. One Health can be operationalized through the adoption of IPE principles and practices into curriculum. This research is critical to educate others on current applications, role, and definitions of One Health and IPE. The ultimate goal of this work is to help cultivate transdisciplinary leaders in the human and animal medicine who will have the skills to solve systemic problems.

Perceived Success After Participation in the Summer Health Professions Education Program

JAMA Network Open · 2024-01-26 · 7 citations

Importance: The number of active health care professionals has not kept pace with the increasing number of minoritized individuals in the US. The Summer Health Professions Education Program (SHPEP) was developed to alleviate this underrepresentation in the health workforce. Objective: To evaluate students' changes in perceived barriers and motivators for entering and succeeding in professional school after SHPEP participation. Design, Setting, and Participants: For this cohort study, anonymous electronic surveys were sent to the 2017 to 2021 SHPEP participants at an academic health center at a large university in the southern US. Participants were first- and second-year undergraduates interested in the health professions and enrolled in the SHPEP. Program participants were invited to complete the study. Exposures: An anonymous electronic survey was administered before and immediately after program completion. Main Outcomes and Measures: The SHPEP Career Barriers Survey (SCBS) is composed of 22 questions on motivators and 20 questions on barriers to entering and succeeding in health professional school. Students responded using a 5-point Likert scale, with 1 indicating strongly disagree and 5 indicating strongly agree. Mixed analysis of variance was used to analyze the program's latent factors. Results: Of all 402 SHPEP participants (mean [SD] age, 19.32 [0.88] years) from 2017 to 2021, 325 completed the preprogram survey and 259 also completed the postprogram survey. Of the 325 initial participants, 4 identified as American Indian or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander (1.2%); 12 as Asian (3.7%); 188 as Black (57.8%); 95 as Hispanic or Latino (29.2%); 7 as White (2.2%); and 16 as multiracial (4.9%). Two hundred twelve participants were female (65.2%), and 226 were first-generation college students (69.5%). Results of the SCBS indicate that the SHPEP had a significant small to moderate association on perceived motivators (mean [SD] x̅ = 84.60 [9.67] vs 80.95 [8.93]; P = .001) and decreases in perceived barriers (mean [SD] x̅ = 48.02 [13.20] vs 51.72 [11.39]; P = .008). There was no significant difference in program success between studied years. Conclusions and Relevance: In this cohort study, the SHPEP appeared to provide essential support for underrepresented students as measured by improved perceived motivators and reduced perceived barriers to entering professional education. Knowledge from this study can assist educators and health care professionals who wish to implement similar enrichment programs.

Enhancing Empathic Communication in Healthcare Education Through Virtual Conversations: Leveraging Large Language Models for Real-Time Feedback

2024-09-29 · 11 citations

Virtual conversations are increasingly utilized in healthcare education to enhance verbal empathic communication skills through tailored feedback on trainees’ responses. These conversations, supported by modalities such as speech, animation, and gestures, are highly customizable and accessible via the internet, bypassing the need for head-mounted displays (HMDs). However, training models to accurately evaluate empathic responses and generate human-like language with actionable suggestions remains a challenge. The advent of large language models (LLMs) provides new solutions to these challenges. This paper examines the impact of GPT-4-generated feedback on the empathic expressions of health professions trainees during virtual conversations. We enrolled 72 students from nursing and dental disciplines in an Interprofessional Collaborative Care course at the University of Florida. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups: one received feedback and suggestions from GPT-4 during conversations, while the other did not. We collected data on the perceived accuracy and helpfulness of the feedback from the intervention group. Using the Empathic Communication Coding System (ECCS) and GPT-4 Turbo, we assessed and compared the empathy levels of participants between the two groups. A Mann-Whitney U test was used to determine differences in average empathy levels. Results showed that participants receiving GPT-4 feedback had significantly higher median empathy levels than those without feedback. Feedback’s accuracy and utility were also affirmed by the participants. This study highlights the effectiveness of integrating LLMs like GPT-4 into virtual conversations for enhancing training outcomes in healthcare education.

Exploring Veterinary Students’ Perceptions of Teamwork and Learning from an Interprofessional Community-Based Experience

Journal of Veterinary Medical Education · 2024-08-26 · 1 citations

The COVID-19 pandemic provided insight into the gaps provided by health care systems that could benefit from collaborative practice across the nexus of the animal and human health professions. The platform of interprofessional education, recognized as a pedagogical platform for delivering the principles of One Health, embodies the benefits of collaboration to address critical emerging public health issues, including the emergence of vector-borne zoonoses, antimicrobial resistance, food security and defense, and the impacts of climatic change. A phenomenological methodology, which is used to understand individuals lived experience, elicited veterinary students' perceptions of the benefits of interprofessional learning. Veterinary students indicated that the interprofessional learning experience facilitated their development of critical skills, including adaptability, communication, mutual support, and an awareness of the social determinants of health, which are critical for readying them for practice in a postpandemic world.

The Intersection of Interprofessional Education and One Health: A Qualitative Study in Human and Veterinary Medical Institutions

SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01