The Partnered Learning Project

Project Handbook

A Guide to Early Planning for the Development of an Interprofessional Collaboration and Education Program in a Healthcare Setting

5.0 Student Placement Scheduling

Questions to Consider

1. Interprofessional Opportunities: Are students from different professions placed in a common area / unit? Click here for more questions...

Are there units in the organization who typically host students from various professions?

2. Time for learning and reflection: Will the schedules of the students completing clinical placements in a common area overlap? Click here for more questions...

Is there overlap by at least 3 weeks in the student clinical placement schedule? If less than a 3 week overlap exists, can contact (teleconferencing, videoconferencing) be arranged? At the time of the IPE placement will the students have started their clinical placements?

3. Shared subject matter: Will students be involved in the care of the same patients while in the clinical area/unit? What patients will the students be learning about? Click here for more questions...

Will students have the opportunity to learn with, from an about each other, and collaborate with each other during all phases of their profession-specific placements?

Our Story

PLP Challenges and Strategies

In our experience, the clinical teams elected to be part of the project prior to knowing if there would be students available for the IPE placements. Some areas were highly sub-specialized and would not have hosted profession specific placements until the students were well advanced in their training. Despite these differences clinical coordinators and academic instructors were generally supportive helping to organize the student placements.

It may be more logical to determine where students are placed and to choose the clinical team based on student availability. Choosing general areas or areas common to many students (general medicine, nephrology, surgery, etc.) versus specialized areas may make the planning process easier as there will usually be a large student population in the area to engage in IPE initiatives. Consider the team structure and characteristics prior to planning a placement for the area. Subspecialty areas may not have students regularly, and staff may have additional responsibilities thereby stressing the student learning experience.

Academic institutions have their own schedule of clinical placements. Clinical placements can range from 3 weeks to several months. Start and end times vary as a result. The actual overlap made the implementation of a 4-5 week placement challenging. Because of the staggered start times students also had differing amounts of experience and knowledge about the hospital. Some already had opportunities to be involved in patient care while others had not. It was a challenge to engage students who have not started their clinical placement in the IPE component as they are preoccupied with what their profession specific placement expectations will be. Without knowing the profession specific expectations it was difficult for some students to speak to their roles in the IPE placement.

You might choose the most common overlap time for your placement. With varying student schedule the overlap may not mirror the clinical placements of all the students meaning that introductory sessions and/or presentations may fall outside of the actual clinical placement. With support from all stakeholders a common schedule was selected and the students typically had the opportunity to complete the whole IPE placement. Ideally planning the introductory session after all students have started their discipline specific placement will help facilitate the transition and inclusion of the IPE placement.

If students have not all started their placement s prior to the first IPE tutorial, consider a general orientation to the hospital and to the unit. Coordinating orientations with the clinical coordinators to meet the needs of both placements may decrease anxiety for the students. If the schedules are limited by geography (i.e. Students are off-site, or have started another clinical placement) consider using teleconferencing to engage the students in active participation.

The best laid plans…In all our IPE placements (at SickKids) students had preceptors on the clinical team engaged in the study. We realized that this alone did not ensure that the students would have the opportunity to work together, or be involved in the care of common patients. Barriers included competing workloads of the preceptors, and learning priorities related to the student’s profession specific learning objectives. In some instances students within one IPE placement group rarely saw each other in the clinical environment and had contact with few common patients among them.

Asking more detailed questions of the academic institutions and clinical coordinators to assess the learning objectives and placement expectations may provide insight into whether the students will be caring for the same patients. If students will have the opportunity to work together and care for common patients then an IPE placement that includes patient themed tutorials is achievable. If students do not have common patients and do not interact, themed tutorials or generic cases may be more valuable. Regardless of the set-up the content of the tutorials must be meaningful to the students for them to be engaged in the learning process.

to Facilitation & Faculty Development