Interprofessional education (IPE) increases students’ self-efficacy to work in interprofessional, person-centered health teams. IPE student leadership organizations have demonstrated an ability to improve students’ feeling about IPE. Therefore, the IPE faculty, staff, and students at Binghamton University recently formed an IPE student leadership group, the Binghamton Inter-Professional Education Consortium (BIPEC), to promote collaborative leadership and student-centered education among the public health, nursing, pharmacy, social work, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech and language pathology students. The founding members of BIPEC dedicated the first year of its existence to the design of foundational structures such as mission and vision statements, values, a logo and name, officer roles and responsibilities, and program evaluation for continuous assessment and improvement. The design of the program evaluation is parallel convergent mixed methods. BIPEC is currently undergoing process evaluation. The purpose of the process evaluation is to 1) assess fidelity in the formation and implementation of BIPEC for improvement and future use, 2) determine the reach of BIPEC based on student and faculty involvement from different academic programs, 3) capture the perspectives of student, staff, and faculty participants and incorporate their input into BIPEC improvements, and 4) document the short, medium, and long term BIPEC outcomes to be used in future outcome evaluations. The key measurables in the process evaluation of BIPEC are 1) descriptive statistics regarding program resources, activities, outputs, and reach and 2) qualitative themes regarding satisfaction among members of BIPEC, including the student leaders and faculty and staff advisors.
This presentation will describe an innovative educational model based on experiential-learning that prepares students to collaborate as a leadership team in addition to engaging faculty and staff in a student-centered IPE approach by including students in the decision-making process. The presentation will highlight the value that students and faculty place in BIPEC such as building confidence, starting an organization from scratch, engaging with community partners to host BIPEC health events, and learning more about different health professions from sustained contact with people representing other academic programs. People who attend this presentation will be able to 1) describe the benefits of promoting IPE student leadership as an experiential approach to fostering collaboration between students from different programs and 2) explain the use of parallel convergent mixed methods in the evaluation of interprofessional student leadership groups.
Three students were included as authors. In addition, several students are presenters. BIPEC's aims center on students' active participation.
