Past Grants

This conference was a collaboration among the six SUNY institutions of Binghamton University, Stony Brook University, SUNY Downstate Medical Center, SUNY Polytechnic Institute, University at Buffalo, and Upstate Medical University. The goals of the conference were to strengthen SUNY IPE programs by comparing and contrasting current models of institutional infrastructure and resources for interprofessional education across the US and within SUNY; describing challenges and identifying solutions to optimize institutional infrastructure and resources for IPE Program optimize institutional IPE program infrastructure and resources; and developing a framework and guiding principles to shape SUNY policies for institutional infrastructure and resources for IPE Programs. Participants met in-person at each participating institution and all institutions were joined by WebEx conferencing technology.

Escape rooms are currently a popular form of entertainment. As an innovative teaching method, escape rooms integrate gaming technology and learning. The literature has shown that escape rooms can help students utilize critical thinking, teamwork, and communication skills. The implications of inadequate communication and lack of teamwork in health care are medical errors and poor patient outcomes. There is recognition that increased interprofessional education offered throughout the curriculum for health care professionals can help to solve these issues as well as to improve population health and reduce health care costs. Pairing escape rooms with simulation has the potential to increase the benefits of these types of interprofessional education. Our long-term goal is to ascertain how best to teach health care professionals to communicate and work as a team. The overall objective for this study is to create and test the use of an interprofessional escape room prior to interprofessional simulation to improve performance in simulation and perceptions of teamwork.

The overarching purpose of this project is to increase access to team-based and integrated addictions and behavioral health services in underserved primary care settings in WNY.  Specifically, this grant will develop and implement enhanced addictions and behavioral health education in students who qualify for the HRSA Behavioral Health/Substance Use Disorder (BH/SUD) Scholars Program, and provide these students with a stipend to offset living expenses during the last year of their clinical practicums. This enhanced addictions and behavioral health education training will include clinical placements in integrated primary care settings located in rural, vulnerable, and underserved communities, as well as comprehensive addictions and behavioral health training and workshops.

Students will be prepared to deliver integrated behavioral care by performing a broad range of clinical skills through development of an interprofessional education collaboration. Graduate students from four professional programs will be invited to become HRSA BH/SUD Scholars including: (1) Mental Health Counseling (MS degree); (2) Rehabilitation Counseling (MS degree); (3) Social Work (MS degree); and (4) Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree).

The objective of this project is to develop and assess objective structured clinical examinations (OSCE) cases involving interprofessional activities. OSCEs are widely used to assess clinical knowledge and skills of healthcare students. However, there is a lack of data on utilizing OSCEs to improve interprofessional education (IPE). It is vital to understand how students can practice interprofessional skills because IPE is emphasized in accreditation standards of multiple healthcare education programs. Data from this research will be used to apply for additional funding, such as a National Science Foundation, National Institute of Health, or a Macy Foundation Grant, with the intent on designing interprofessional OSCEs with the healthcare professional programs at our university.

Using technology-enhanced interprofessional experiential learning, health professions students will improve healthcare delivery for refugee and underserved populations by increasing their cultural sensitivity and understanding of health care disparities through engagement with refugee and underserved African American communities and learning to communicate with individuals with limited English proficiency using professional interpreters.

The purpose of this project was to assess the impact of a “flipped classroom” approach to health information literacy skills development on the ability of interprofessional groups of health professions students to collaboratively develop an evidence-based interprofessional plan of care. Our findings showed that:

• health professions students gain foundational EBP knowledge and skills and experience in interprofessional teams by transitioning uni-professional, traditional EBP instruction to a flipped classroom educational strategy with students from multiple health professions programs;
• students preferred the flipped classroom approach to a more traditional approach and favored learning in an interprofessional group.