Developing Partnerships to Expand Interprofessional Practice-Focused Educational Experiences in High-Risk Obstetric Care

Abstract

Healthcare practice is continuing to shift toward interprofessional team-based care to improve the patient experience and the health of populations as well as to reduce the per capita cost of healthcare (National Center for Interprofessional Practice & Education, 2013). In particular, high-risk pregnancy is a uniquely complex healthcare challenge, which makes team- and partnership-based care in this specialty essential (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ Task Force on Collaborative Practice, 2016). Despite healthcare leaders in the United States recognizing the need for collaborative care models and team-based care, the training of healthcare professions students in the skills needed to collaborate effectively as part of an interprofessional team have lagged dramatically behind the changes in current healthcare practices (Interprofessional Education Collaborative [IPEC] Expert Panel, 2011; National Center for Interprofessional Practice & Education, 2015b). A Doctorate of Nursing Practice (DNP) Student and a Women’s Health DNP Program faculty identified that there was an opportunity to implement interprofessional practice-focused immersion experiences for advanced practice registered nursing (APRN) students at an academic Maternal-Fetal Medicine Center. The faculty and student partnership allowed for the project interventions to be integrated directly into an existing APRN practicum course. This project’s implementation provided an opportunity for the Maternal-Fetal Medicine Center to integrate APRN students into their clinical team, and demonstrated that interprofessional practice-focused immersion experiences are beneficial for students’ learning of how to collaborate effectively as part of an interprofessional team, which is congruent with the research. The Maternal-Fetal Medicine Center embodied many of the components of the domains of interprofessional practice and qualities of a partnership-based system, making it an optimal site for interprofessional learning. This project’s positive results support a sustainable and unique partnership between the School of Nursing and the Maternal-Fetal Medicine Center to expand student opportunities as members of an interprofessional team in a high-risk obstetric care setting. Continued exposure of healthcare professions students to partnership-based healthcare settings like this center may help to shift systems toward the partnership paradigm.

Keywords

• interprofessional practice
• interprofessional collaboration
• partnership
• women's health
• team-based care
• obstetrics