Different Fields, Same Goals: Sonoran Center Contributes to Interprofessional Education Event on Disabilities
In February 2023, the Sonoran Center was proud to contribute to another successful Interprofessional Education Event on Disability. Over 700 University of Arizona students gained valuable insight about collaborating across different fields to provide quality healthcare for people with disabilities.
The IPE Event on Disability is part of a series of interprofessional education events for students from the University of Arizona and across the state which are presented by the UA’s Center for Interprofessional Healthcare, directed by Margie Arnett MS. Topics include Introduction to Interprofessionalism, Pandemic IPE, Disability, and Team Behaviors. The event has grown over the last several years - this year, hundreds of students participated in the course.
As the name implies, the event focuses on collaboration from practitioners in different aspects of the healthcare system. While Nursing and Public Health students make up a large segment of attendees, a number of students of Audiology, Nutrition, Physical Therapy, and Occupational Therapy participate as well.
“The goal of the interprofessional events is to encourage the students and give them an opportunity to work together as teams and see what strengths each profession brings to a group problem solving effort,” said Dr. Tammie Bassford, the facilitator of the Disability event.
Among the Interprofessional Education events, the Disability event is unique in that it incorporates community members with a variety of disabilities to discuss their experiences with healthcare. This allows the students to hear firsthand about the challenges of navigating the healthcare system while disabled.
“We’re trying to draw on people with lived experience with disability to be our co-teachers and provide that perspective,” Bassford said.
Tamsen “Tammie” Bassford, MD
The event consists of several sections: The first is pre-work involving reading about the disparities in healthcare regarding people with disabilities, as well as viewing video interviews with disability self-advocates.
“Every IPE course tries to provide opportunities for students from different specialties to work together. I think what we are able to do in the disability event is to also provide them the opportunity to work with community members that represent the patients we’re talking about,” Bassford said.
Then, the participants view a two-part video of a fictionalized account of “Vicky”, a person with Down Syndrome and diabetes navigating the healthcare system. The students assess how well the healthcare providers in the video live up to the values of inclusiveness and accessibility.
“We use a “Disability Values Checklist” during the first part of the video, where students can record how often the care team in the video team fulfills those values. For example, when a team member asks “Vicky’s” sister questions about her healthcare instead of asking “Vicky” herself,” Bassford explained. “The students meet in small groups, with the community members, to discuss what they found. After we debrief with the full class, we watch the second half of the video. In this second video, Vicky has a much stronger voice - the questions are all directed at her, for example. It’s not perfect, but it does a much better job of meeting the disability values. In the next small group meetings, students think about the bigger picture: how could various aspects of Vicky’s life be enriched by different team members? Or were there members missing from the team that could help make Vicky’s life her best life?”
The course ends with one more group discussion. After the course, students are asked about their attitudes on a number of subjects relating to providing care to people with disabilities. The students consistently report growth in understanding across a variety of areas, including how comfortable they are working with people with disabilities and how interprofessional teams can engage people with disabilities.
Dr. Bassford isn’t the only Sonoran Center staff member to contribute to the event. “Vicky”, the protagonist of the video, was portrayed by a participant of ArtWorks. Dr Lynne Tomasa performs the student evaluations. Other Sonoran Center staff were involved in either creating or editing the video and attend the event each year. Moreover, the community members participating in the panel discussion were contacted via the Sonoran Center listserv, as well as through the Arizona Special Olympics.
The event opens the opportunity for discussion of disability in healthcare not only for patients, but for providers and support staff as well. Dr. Bassford recalled how seeing the community members talk about their experience encouraged students with a disability to share their own experiences:
“I think that when you have real patients there, people who have experiences in the healthcare system as a person with disabilities, it makes the topic a little more real. The students bring a lot more focus and respect to the conversation because of the presence of our community members,”
Ultimately, the IPE event on disability helps people from a wide variety of professions in healthcare understand that they are really working towards the same goal: learning to provide accessible and competent care to their patients with disabilities.
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You can read more in this recent article from the University of Arizona Health Sciences. READ MORE