The Center for Interprofessional Education and Practice (CIEP)at the MGH Institute launched in early June 2023 to house all the activities that involve interprofessional work for faculty and students. That includes the pro bono work done through the Sanders IMPACT Practice Center (IPC),the simulation work done at the IPC and in Shouse, the IMPACT curriculum that is required for all entry level programs, and the Interprofessional Dedicated Education Units, a clinical education experience at Massachusetts General Hospital. It also encompasses activities like Community Impact Day, the common reading program, and the Caldwell rounds. In this month’s IHP Interview, OSC’s Lisa McEvoy speaks with Dr. Regina Doherty, who served as chair of the Occupational Therapy Department before she was named the inaugural Dean of Interprofessional Education and Practice, about some of the initial objectives of the team and what’s next. 

What did you want to focus on when you became dean? 

The IHP has always had a very strong commitment to interprofessional education and practice, and the dean's position was created to provide strategic leadership to these efforts.   

When I started, we pulled together as a CIEP team to think about what we were doing across the various CIEP programming. What was the student experience across the various interprofessional education offerings? How were we documenting our outcomes and measuring IPEP competencies in our students? What's our combined CIEP mission and shared goals? How do we strategically work together to position the IHP as a leader in this space and disseminate the IHP’s great IPEP work nationally and internationally? What do we want to accomplish in the first year?

And I did a lot of listening. I had a good deal of familiarity with the IHP’s IPEP curriculum as a department chair and through my work on interprofessional grants, but I wanted to hear more about the systems and processes that supported our full IPEP portfolio. 

You have been in your role at your current level of 0.5 FTE since last June. What are some of the things you have done over the past year?

In the first year, we did a deep dive into how we were operating and what we needed to improve. The CIEP team and I evaluated how we were planning, budgeting for, and delivering our IPE and simulation-based services across the IHP and MGB. Did we have what we needed? Were we using resources and systems strategically? What were the opportunities for innovation? We thought critically about our current IPE portfolio of offerings, what learning objectives they were linked to, how we were measuring them, and whether the students had the materials they needed and faculty the training they needed.

For example, CIEP supports all the simulation activities that faculty implement at the IHP. So, if you're a PT or a nursing faculty, you contact CIEP to arrange this experiential learning, and you say whether you want to do high fidelity simulation or you want to work with simulated participants (SPs). We put in place structure to support these activities, including best practice guidelines that support faculty, and training that supports our actors, all to ensure that the student gets the best learning experience possible. Anyone can run a simulation; we want to make sure it is run aligned with best practices. For example, we don’t “use” SPs, we collaborate with them as educational partners.

Putting in place those best practices was one big piece of what we did the first year. We also looked critically at the learning objectives for the IMPACT courses and all IPEP learning activities (Child Development Day, the IPDEU at MGH, Schwartz Rounds) and aligned them with entry level program specific accreditation standards. We've done a lot of work over the last year around the IMPACT course work, thinking critically about systems that support student learning outcomes and faculty development. 

Another example is the free care we deliver in the Sanders IMPACT Practice Center (IPC). There are various centers within the IPC that up until this year all used different client documentation systems. The goal was to have one electronic medical record for client registration and care documentation. This system not only helps students and faculty collaborate interprofessionally, but it also helps us document the many free care visits we provide annually, the diagnoses we treat, and outcomes of clients served. 

Who makes up the CIEP team?

CIEP is a small, but mighty can-do team and I'm so, so proud of them! Many of our faculty and staff have been recognized across the IHP and MGB system for their collaborative excellence. Just this past year, 30% of our team were recognized at the 2024 Pillars of Excellence Award Ceremony. 

In addition to me, there are two Assistant Deans. Dr. Midge Hobbs is the assistant Dean for the IMPACT curriculum who oversees the broad reach of the IMPACT IPE curriculum (including the interprofessional peer facilitators program) and activities like Community IMPACT Day, Balint Groups, and the Common Reading Program. Dr. Rachel Pittman, Assistant Dean for Interprofessional Practice, oversees the Sanders IMPACT Practice Center and the simulation-based learning activities delivered across campus. Midge and Rachel are true IPE leaders whose work has substantially advanced IPE at the IHP. 

Rebecca Inzana is an assistant professor and certified healthcare simulation educator who is CIEP faculty for a percentage of her time and works clinically at MGH as a medical SLP. Rebecca supports the IPDEU, IMPACT I and II, Child Development Day, and the Caldwell and Schwartz Rounds, as well as other CIEP educational activities. Rebecca leads the faculty development we provide in simulation debriefing best practices for all our IMPACT IPE faculty.   

Tony Williams is our standardized patient manager. Tony has been instrumental in the simulated participant (SP) program not only here at the IHP, but across the MGB system. He coordinates all SP activities across the IHP, collaborating with faculty on simulation case development, scripts, scenarios and training the SP actors that we partner with to optimize student and clinician education. Tony also coordinates CIEP’s external simulated participant services that support continuing professional development across MGB and other healthcare organizations. 

Eliana Palumbo is a senior simulation operations specialist with CIEP. She supports the wide variety of high-fidelity simulation-based learning that takes place in our Shouse SIM labs and across campus. Eliana is a trained EMT and works interprofessionally across SON and SHRS. This past year she has also supported the Charlestown Youth Scholars High School program, working with Laura Plummer on simulation-based learning experiences for high school students. 

Rina Lara is a part time staff assistant in the Simulated Participant Program. She works closely with Tony, Eliana, and the CIEP team to support simulation education and the many moving pieces associated with both internal and external SP services. Rina is also a trained medical interpreter and has been a key partner in SP training. 

Jenny Ling Hui Loh is the Lead Client Services Coordinator for the Sanders IMPACT Practice Center (IPC) and a Simulation Support Team Member. Jenny supports front and back of house day-to-day operations at the IPC. She is the face of the center, and you can find her greeting clients, supporting faculty, scheduling rooms, and making all the moving pieces associated with the IPC come together. Jenny has been instrumental in supporting systems implementation and roll out. She is certified by the Association of Standardized Patient Educators (ASPE) in Fundamentals of SP Methodology.

Lindsay McCabe is a patient services coordinator in the Sanders IPC. Lindsay divides her time between CIEP and the Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary (MEEI). She supports client care coordination across all the IPC Centers and the MEEI satellite clinic at the IPC. 

Yolanda Mendez Rainey is our CIEP operations manager extraordinaire who helps integrate all CIEP programming. Yolanda serves as the CIEP liaison to all students, faculty, and staff, both across IHP programs, and externally. Yolanda has been instrumental in supporting our Community Impact Day and IMPACT curriculum, coordinating sections and interprofessional faculty for over 600 students annually. Yolanda was named the Employee of the Year in 2017 for her collaborative excellence. 

Finally, CIEP could not meet the goals of our unit without the many term lecturers that support our interprofessional initiatives. We have long-standing term lecturers like Beth Hansen and Lynne Brady Wagner, who teach interprofessional ethics; Rachel Rubin, who supports the Peer Facilitators and Community Day; Jodi Berstein who supports the Health Mentors program; and Jessica Asiello who supports the IPDEU, to name a few. 

What is the Common Reading Program?

 The common reading was implemented as part of institution wide IPE / new student orientation in 2012. It leverages story as a global way to construct meaning and a shared experience. Students are provided with the name of the common reading and a code for a digital copy of the book prior to matriculation. The common reading this year is Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordi­­­nary Resilient Disabled Body by Rebekah Taussig. Engaging with the common reading prior to matriculation, and during the CIEP discussion session at orientation, allows learners to understand complexities of health through story and reflect on how structures of inequality can impact health outcomes. 

I participated in all the common reading sessions this year and it was heartwarming to see the perspective taking and learning shared across our students —some who have had a lot of experiences before becoming a health professional, some who have had none. Understanding the patient’s point of view of receiving / living with a diagnosis / illness is a key part of being a health professional. The common reading connects the art and science of healthcare. Through the common reading, IHP students spend time reflecting on what it means to be a health professional, and what are the values and ethics pieces that go with being a health professional from the very beginning. 

We open the common reading to anyone in the IHP community. They can access the common reading and come to any of the sessions. We also did a session for the alumni, which was a cross collaboration between CIEP and the Office of Alumni Relations. 

Can you share more details about the Interprofessional Dedicated Education Units?

The IPDEU started in 2011 and the goals of the IPDEU are really to help people understand the roles and responsibilities of other professions on the healthcare team. In clinical training, a student usually observes and trains with the profession that they are entering. The IPDEU is an innovative IPE model where students in entry level programs observe a professional in the hospital on the care team that is not from their discipline. So, for example, a nursing student will observe a PT in practice for a day. It is mandatory for some IHP programs and optional for others. 

We train the clinical staff at the hospital how to highlight the interprofessional aspects of their care for our learners, such as how an OT communicates with the physician, the nurses, the team, and the family for the best discharge plan. Instructors highlight the core competencies of teamwork, values and ethics, communication, and the collaboration involved in care delivery. It is not necessarily, ‘this is how I put the IV line in’ but the nurse would teach the PT student the reason they are paging the doc about the IV line location related to the patient needing to mobilize. They're highlighting the collaboration and coordination of care.

The students observe for about four hours and then they debrief with a faculty member and talk about their a-ha moments and their learning. It's a really nice way to understand the interprofessional contributions of all individuals on the healthcare delivery team – including the professional and assistive staff. Oftentimes we think that if students read about collaborative care, or think about it, they'll understand it. But spending a day shadowing illustrates true, team-based care. 

I co-chair the IPDEU steering committee with the executive director of education and professional development at MGH. I have worked extensively with this interprofessional, cross organization group of leaders and clinicians over the last year to improve and support the model. In our future work, we want to better document the program outcomes for our current learners, our alumni, the hospital staff, and ultimately for the patient. 

What do you want to accomplish over the next year?

Over the next year, we want to use some of those good systems that we put in place to continue to design, advance, and inspire the future of IPEP. 

We are working to document our IHP IPE outcomes more systematically and expand our scholarly dissemination. CIEP faculty and staff present at national and international conferences, but a goal for our team next year is to disseminate our educational research and outcomes with greater frequency in peer reviewed journals to increase our national / international reach and reputation.

We have had some good success with grant awards over the last year. Dr. Hobbs and Dr. Pittman were both recipients of intra and extramural funding to support their work in simulation education for compassionate care, community service learning, and telehealth best practices. We are collaborating with colleagues at peer IPE institutions on an IPE outcome measurement tool aligned with the new IPEC Competencies that targets self-efficacy in interprofessional collaborative practice. These are exciting IPE projects and opportunities. 

We also want to work with the development office around supporting some of this work. It's expensive to run a center where you provide free care but don't receive any revenue for those services. It's expensive to purchase over 600 new students a book code. I was thrilled that both of the IHP Marathon Runners this year chose to run for the IPC! Their fundraising efforts were instrumental in helping us advance our philanthropic goals. If we can better document our IPEP outcomes, we can look to philanthropy to help support some of this great work. We can eventually go to grant funders and say, ‘here's all the great things we're doing. We think we'd be a great match for you to philanthropically support the work done at the Center.’

As grant and philanthropic support increase, a goal of CIEP is to support our IHP faculty and staff in innovative IPE program development and research. The IHP has IPE in its DNA. I would like to support and advance the rigor of this collaborative work across entry level and post professional programs through small faculty research grants and innovation project funding. 

Our simulation team has worked extensively to develop a new simulated participant training program. This program shows great promise for training future SPs in best practices for interprofessional education. I look forward to seeing this program advance and evolve over the next year. 

There's a lot of international partners who are eager to learn from us, and so we're doing some seed work on international collaborations now. There's a lot of people who see our IPE programming as exemplary. In many health professions training programs, you do a one-hour care rounds activity with another profession, and that's your IPE education. We are way beyond that. Maybe even too far. And that's the question. What’s the right dosage of IPE? What is the best delivery model? Our graduates lead in interprofessional collaborative care delivery. I hear it every day. I am confident that our collaborative work in CIEP and across the MGB system will advance the field of interprofessional education and practice substantially in the next year.   

Do you have a story the Office of Strategic Communications should know about? If so, let us know.