October / November / December • Issue 4 • 2017
Elizabeth Peterson, PhD, OTR / L, FAOTA Michael Koronkowski, Pharm D
Memoona Hasnain, MD, MHPE, PhD Valerie Gruss, PhD, APN, CNP-BC
UIC’ s Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program“ ENGAGE-IL” Leads to Educational Opportunities for Occupational Therapy Practitioners
Interprofessional education( IPE) is increasingly recognized as an essential component of training for many health professions, including occupational therapy. Educational standards set forth by the Accreditation Council for Occupational Therapy Education( ACOTE ®) for occupational therapy assistant and occupational therapy programs at both the master’ s and doctoral levels include IPErelated expected learning outcomes for students. This is not surprising. Together, the U. S. patient safety movement, along with Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act initiatives focus on the value and quality of medical services, as opposed to the volume of care provided, and create an imperative for IPE and interprofessional( IP) collaborative practice( Dow & Thibault, 2017; Case-Smith, Page, Darragh, Rybski, & Cleary, 2014). IPE is especially important to support health care providers’ effectiveness in the area of gerontology. The health and well-being of older adults is dependent upon the delicate interplay among physical, psychosocial and contextual factors. Health care team members can work collaboratively as a means to reduce errors, improve the quality of care, and control health care costs( WHO, 2010).
Barriers to IPE in gerontology range from the paucity of available programs and the breadth of topics to be covered, to the complex logistics of coordinating schedules to allow for meaningful IP learning experiences. Recognizing the challenges and the need for resources to support expertise in geriatrics among diverse health care professionals, educators at the University of Illinois at Chicago( UIC) sought and secured a 3-year, $ 2.5 million grant titled ENGAGE-IL( ENhancement of Geriatric Care for All through TraininG and Empowerment). The project was funded by the Health Resources & Service Administration( HRSA) as part of HRSA’ s Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program( GWEP) which aims to integrate geriatrics into primary care.
The ENGAGE-IL funding has supported a number of geriatric IPE efforts at UIC, including an interprofessional Scholars and Leaders in Geriatrics course( offered in 2016 and 2017) for occupational therapy students from the College of Applied Health Sciences and students from the Colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy and Social Work. The course is designed to enable students to acquire attitudes, values as well as attain core competencies necessary for comprehensive, patient-and familycentered geriatric care in teams, and provides e x p e r i e n t i a l learning across various clinical and communitybased settings. The course assignments and debriefing opportunities facilitated students’ reflections on a range of topics including scope of practice across disciplines, characteristics of effective team-work, health care disparities, leadership, advocacy and ethics.
The target audience for ENGAGE-IL’ s educational efforts extends beyond UIC students. The ENGAGE-IL team has launched the Online Accredited Learning Interprofessional Geriatrics Program( OALIG). The program consists of a library of free, on-line continuing education( CE) modules on topics related to gerontology. These topics include, but are not limited to the aging process, falls among communitydwelling older adults, caregiver burden, common acquired hospital complications, community services, and payment systems, pain management, and sleep quality. To date, 20 education modules have been developed and are available at engageil. com, with more modules being developed each month. Most of the modules are 30 minutes in length, and all were developed, written, and reviewed by interprofessional content experts.
UIC ENGAGE-IL is an AOTA Approved Provider(# 10173)*, and occupational therapy practitioners around the country can earn CE credit for completing the modules. The
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