The Efficacy of Virtual Media to Deliver Interprofessional Education to Healthcare Learners in Southern Ontario: Successes, Shortcomings, and Potential Applicability to Rural Settings

Interprofessional education (IPE) occurs when learners from multiple disciplines collaborate to learn with, and from, each other. The goal of IPE is to encourage learners to seek interprofessional collaboration (IPC) in future practice, consequently improving patient health outcomes. However, implementing IPE within existing curricula is challenging due to constraints based on location and timing. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether IPE could be delivered effectively through a virtual learning platform.

Learners from 12 different health professions across three universities were invited to participate in a virtual IPE workshop. Following the workshop, learners’ attitudes were measured using an online survey. Areas such as learning outcome and effectiveness of the virtual platform were assessed using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Average responses were calculated from response frequencies. Three open-ended items were analyzed using content analysis for themes and reported as response frequencies.

A total of 1051/1345 (78%) surveys were completed. Overall, learners indicated improved understanding of their own and others’ roles plus various scopes of practice and increased confidence in communication with learners from other health professions. Learners also found IPE Day to be a meaningful learning experience and provided constructive feedback for future iterations of the event.

Healthcare learners were favorable toward the virtual delivery of IPC educational events. These findings therefore support the deliverance of future IPE activities between rural and urban healthcare learners and may demonstrate an avenue to bridge urban–rural healthcare gaps by supporting interprofessional collaboration across geographies.