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Student Symposium 2021

Case Study From IPE Event

Due to COVID-19 not providing us enough time to gather data for the first part of our doctoral project, we decided to shift our main focus on postpartum depression and inter-professional education. We created a case study that revolved around postpartum depression that various professions in the College of Health could participate in. We wanted to include audiology, speech pathology, nursing, social work, and counseling psychology. We reached out to faculty and professors in each department and asked if they could forward our flyer to undergraduate and graduate students.

In order to follow the guidelines in regards to gatherings, we decided our event would be held virtually utilizing the Zoom platform. We began the event by discussing what inter-professional education was and why it is important. Then we went through the case study with everyone before sending them to breakout rooms, where they were to talk about the discussion points below in regards to the case. We created 4 breakout rooms that had at least one student or professor from each profession that signed up. After thirty minutes of discussion in the breakout rooms, we brought everyone back together and had each group discuss what they came up with for each of the discussion points. Before the event ended, we asked everyone to fill out the post-survey we created to provide us with feedback on how the event went.

Below you will see the flyer we created, the case study, discussion points, and the results of the post-survey.

Audiology IPE

Case Study:

A 29 year old female was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when she was younger. This patient recently had a baby who was born at 30 weeks because the mother was diagnosed with preeclampsia. Due to a difficult pregnancy, the mother suffers from severe postpartum depression, causing her to feel disconnected with her baby since she is still in the NICU. When the baby was born, the doctor and nurse noticed the baby had a cleft lip. After the nurse completed the Apgar, they have concerns with vitals, development of the organs, and how the baby will do with suctioning and swallowing of food. An additional screening called the Universal Newborn Hearing Screening (UNHS) was completed with results of the baby not passing in both ears and showing a potential hearing loss.

After going over the case study with everyone, each participant was assigned to a breakout room where the following points were discussed:

  1. How can your profession contribute to this case?
  2. Describe any tests, evaluations, or questionnaires that you would use in this case.
  3. What are your recommendations?
  4. Would you recommend the patient see any additional professions?
  5. How do you see your profession working with other professionals involved in this case?

Once the IPE event ended, a post-survey was sent out to all the participants. Here is what the post-survey looked like:

Audiology IPE

Results

Nineteen out of twenty-one participants completed the post-survey with the following feedback.

Audiology IPE Audiology IPE

Please tell us what you liked about this event:

  • "It was fun to collaborate with students from other departments."
  • "I really liked hearing the different perspective of different professions that we will be working with in the future. I think the different perspectives were helpful to hear and discuss."
  • " I really enjoyed learning things from other professions perspectives because sometimes it can be easy to develop a tunnel vision to your specific profession."
  • "It was great to hear from other professions and learn about what they would do in treating specific issues. The breakout rooms were an excellent idea as people would've been much less likely to speak up in the larger group without having previously discussed in the breakout rooms"

    Please tell us what you did not like about this event:

    • "I would like to have seen more discussion about how to coordinate care amongst so many professions."
    • "I would have liked to have a larger variety of professions in my group, but some of that can't be helped if some people register and don't attend."
    • "More than one case study during the event could also be interesting!"
    • "I expected the case study to be focused on 1 patient, but instead was actually 2 patients. It would've been nice to have one singular patient to see how various professions work together in treating a whole person. Some professions didn't have anything to add for one patient or the other (e.g., audiology didn't have much to add for the mom, counseling didn't have much to add for the baby)."

    What did you take away from this event?

    • "I took away a better perspective of a Social Worker and what their perspective would be, how they would approach this case, and what their major concerns were. In this case you have to very much consider both the mother AND the newborn."
    • "IPE is VERY important. Without basic communication skills and a general understanding of other professions, we run the risk of creating teamwork issues and power differentials which distracts us from providing the best care we can for the client(s)."
    • "I think I will now have more respect for each profession we work with, as well as new ways to be able to communicate with them through cases when we will all need to work together."

    Overall the IPE event was successful based off the feedback provided. The event helped accomplish two goals: 1.) highlight the importance of identification and follow-up for postpartum depression/anxiety in moms, and 2.) demonstrate an inter-professional approach to best serve patients.