Medical and Pharmacy Students Work Together to Simulate Real-World Collaboration

As the latest interprofessional education (IPE) exercise wrapped up, Jennifer M. Namba, Pharm.D., associate clinical professor of pharmacy for the University of California San Diego Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences reminded the students, “relying on your team helps to build a stronger team.”

More than 200 medical and pharmacy students had just spent the last three hours working together in small groups to diagnose and create a treatment plan for a male patient presenting at the emergency department with abdominal issues, fatigue and anxiety as general complaints.  These types of IPE exercises help to prepare health care students for the type of collaboration required to effectively treat patients in various clinical settings.

Through a series of small scenarios, the second-year medical students and third-year pharmacy students were lead through the entire patient interaction from introduction to diagnosis to discharge.

“Today, we are doing medicine like it’s done in the real world,” said Cameron McGuire, M.D., clinical instructor and research fellow in pulmonary and critical care for the UC San Diego School of Medicine. “This is an exercise in clinical reasoning. We all bring different skills and expertise to the table. We need to leverage each other’s skills to provide the best care for our patients.”

IPE is not a new concept to the students. Each year, the medical students and pharmacy students have several opportunities to complete IPE events, which are designed to bring students together from different disciplines to learn from and with one another.

Bringing the students together during training helps to encourage relationship building across disciplines, which can lead to improved patient outcomes.

“I appreciate these interdisciplinary experiences,” said Anahi Ibarra, second-year medical student. “Just talking and getting to know the pharmacy students and learning what their training looks like compared to ours is beneficial. We will all be working together some day, so it has been advantageous to train and learn together.”

For this exercise, the patient’s history and symptoms were revealed as the exercise progressed. The students were tasked with a variety of different actions, including summarizing the case, developing a differential diagnosis, ordering diagnostic studies and developing a treatment plan.

“The case was designed so that there were specific areas where pharmacy students' knowledge will be paramount and other parts where the medical students' knowledge will be paramount, and a number of parts where both students will have a lot to offer,” explained McGuire. “After each small group breakout, students described some of their reasoning to the larger group and then different faculty members led mini didactics to further enhance the learning.”

For third-year pharmacy student Sarah Kousba, the collaborative focus of the exercise was appreciated.

“A lot of people think that pharmacists just dose medications,” said Kousba. “But this helped to show how our training prepares us to optimize patient care through identifying the best treatment options. Exercises like this help to build mutual respect and encourage learning from one another. These types of events have been among the highlights of my training so far.”

Maria Golovkina, Pharm.D., first-year pharmacy resident, assisted with the exercise. As she roamed the classroom she spoke to the groups of students and helped them to think a little deeper about each task at hand. She remembers these types of training events from when she was a pharmacy student.

“These types of experiences help to provide a voice to the pharmacy students,” said Golovkina. “It gives them practice with being at the top of mind for the medical students as well. The real world is collaborative. Through the various tasks, they can each see how well they intersect and how pharmacy fits into the whole diagnosis and treatment process.”

As the event wrapped up, Shirley Tsunoda, Pharm.D., professor of clinical pharmacy and associate dean for pharmacy education at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy, commended the students for their effective treatment plans and thoroughness in thinking through all of the various diagnosis and treatment plans that the students created for the patient.