Interprofessional education occurs when learners of multiple health and social care professions learn about, from, and with each other to develop cohesive practices that improve health care and social well-being. Students from the five health and social care majors offered at LAU participate in the Interprofessional Education (IPE) program, coming together from the School of Arts & Sciences, the Alice Ramez Chagoury School of Nursing, the School of Pharmacy, and the Gilbert & Rose-Marie Chagoury School of Medicine.

Mission

The mission of the IPE program is to prepare health and social care professionals who have the attitudes, knowledge, skills and commitment required to function as effective collaborative team members in providing high quality, patient/client-centered care.

The IPE program builds on the curricula of LAU’s health and social care programs and uses a student-centered educational approach. The program partners with post-licensure professionals to foster life-long learning and creation of environments that support interprofessional health and social care collaboration.

Program Objectives

The IPE program provides learning experiences for health and social care students in settings ranging from classrooms to laboratories and clinical settings related to the:

1. value of interprofessional collaboration in providing high quality patient/client-centered care,
2. specific knowledge and skills that various health and social care professionals bring to the care of patients/clients,
3. methods for promoting effective communication, collaboration, and teamwork among health and social care professionals,
4. strategies of sharing and integrating evidence-based practice that draws on research and best practices from all health and social care fields to improve patient/client care,
5. knowledge and skills needed to develop and participate in interprofessional quality improvement activities, and
6. incorporation of ethical standards of different health and social care professionals, all to enhance health care outcomes and social well-being.

Learning Outcomes

Graduates of LAU’s health and social care programs should be able to:

1. recognize other professionals’ expertise, roles, responsibilities and competence,
2. use effective communication techniques with other professionals to effect change and resolve conflict when providing patient/client care,
3. develop interprofessional collaboration in health and social care settings,
4. make decisions with other professionals and the patient/client when planning and implementing health and social care,
5. develop interprofessional case conferences, team meetings, and quality improvement activities,
6. demonstrate evidence-based interdisciplinary approaches to provide a safe environment for patients/clients and achieve good patient/client outcomes, and
7. resolve ethical issues that arise in health and social care settings.

Work Group/Faculty

Faculty from the five LAU academic programs that prepare health and social care professionals come together to plan and offer all IPE learning activities.

School of Arts & Sciences (Nutrition Program)

• Joelle Abi Kharma, M.P.H., RDN, Licensed Dietitian

Gilbert & Rose-Marie Chagoury School of Medicine

• Nadia Asmar, M.D., General Medicine/Occupational Medicine & Homeopathy Clinical & Communication Skills
• Wael Salame, M.D., Psychiatry

Alice Ramez Chagoury School of Nursing

• Abed Al Wahab Al Firikh, M.S.N., CNRN
• Maha Habre, D.N.P., M.S.N., R.N., C.E.N., IPE Coordinator
• Zeina El-Jordi, M.S.N., R.N.

School of Pharmacy

• Aline Milane, Pharm.D., Ph.D., Pharmaceutical Sciences

Programs/ Learning Activities

The IPE Work Group/Faculty schedules IPE learning activities at the onset of every academic year. Students are notified through their own school or department of the IPE activities they will be attending. The didactic sessions are held online in both asynchronous and synchronous fashion (see below). Practice IPE learning activities enable students to transfer what they have learned about IPE to the actual care of patients and clients in clinical health care and community settings.

Didactic LAU-IPE Steps

The Lebanese American University Interprofessional Education (LAU IPE) core sessions consist of three, 2-hour mandatory, extracurricular and longitudinal workshops offered throughout the curriculum of health and social care students (i.e. pharmacy, medicine, nursing, nutrition and social work). The series is equivalent to 15 contact hours, and delivered over two or three years, depending on the profession. Students from different professions are grouped together by program level based on their amount of clinical experience and familiarity with interdisciplinary practice. Core 1 includes students who have not yet had any clinical learning experience regardless of their class year. Core 2 and 3 includes students who are enrolled in clinical experience. All core sessions follow the same model: students will have to prepare for each session by watching prerecorded videos. The sessions will then be given online by a facilitator (around 30 per group). The students will then be subdivided in small mixed groups and given a case to solve using the tools given in the videos. This design has been chosen to increase the interaction in between students from different schools and trigger communication and problem solving.

• IPE core 1: Introduction and communication tools
• IPE core 2: Teamwork and conflict management
• IPE core 3: Ethics in an interprofessional approach

Practice IPE

Proposed IPE elective sessions will be offered on blackboard starting AY 2022-23.

Contact Information

For more information, visit the IPE website or contact ipe@lau.edu.lb

or

Wael Salameh, MD, Assistant Professor, IPE Coordinator
wael.salame@lau.edu.lb