Working together in clinical pathology: An interprofessional education initiative for dentistry, oral health, and medical laboratory science teachers and students

Abstract

Introduction. In the health professional education literature, there is a need for information about the teaching and learning of medical laboratory sciences for clinical practice. The goal of this reflection-on-practice is to describe how an orofacial pathology interprofessional education (IPE) initiative was designed and implemented. Innovation. The designers of this initiative were teachers from dentistry, oral health, and medical laboratory science. The designers used six interprofessional competences (patient-centred care, role clarification, team functioning, collaborative leadership, communication, and cultural practice) to guide their construction of teaching and learning resources. The initiative required students to work collaboratively with a given patient case to develop a differential diagnosis, prepare a treatment plan, present their case to classmates and staff members, and describe how they worked together to address the orofacial pathology in their case. Evaluation. The designers collected and considered evaluation information including the learning resources used, logistical arrangements for the initiative, and student ratings about interprofessional competencies. Outcomes. In general, the designers felt that they had successfully designed and implemented an IPE initiative that met five of the six interprofessional competencies. The designers did not feel that the cultural practice competency was adequately addressed in this version of the initiative. What next? Given the acceptability of this initiative to the designers, facilitators, and students, the next step is to consider the feasibility of scaling-up this small voluntary IPE initiative into a permanent component of the dentistry,