The College of Health and Behavioral Studies sponsors a variety of short-term interprofessional and interdisciplinary seminars and workshops for students at the undergraduate and graduate levels. These activities are most often associated with existing disciplinary courses and are thus part of the academic work required for those courses. Other experiences might be co-curricular opportunities.
Interprofessional Education Seminar for School Teams is a six-hour workshop with two main goals; first, to expose students to a process for building interprofessional collaboration with other school professionals, and second, to send students into the workforce with interprofessional skills to positively impact systems where they would be employed. The workshop provides a series of interprofessional activities including student presentations about the role of their profession in a school setting, discussing case scenarios to include diverse professional perspectives, developing treatment plans and identifying ethical issues. Wrap-up activities involve reflection on the day’s experiences and future application.
This two-hour long event provides an interprofessional education case study in which students are given a patient scenario in advance to prepare themselves to play their professional role in the continuum of care for the patient. Students are placed in interprofessional teams facilitated by faculty members from diverse professions. Teams discuss the varying roles among the health professions in providing coordinated care for the patient.
The Health Policy Summit (HPS), is the bi-annual, half-day, team-based (Michaelsen & Sweet, 2008) experience for 250–300 students from CHBS and other select majors at JMU. Focused on “hot topic” health care policy issues, students are placed into interdisciplinary teams where they take an individual readiness test, a group readiness test and discuss these with faculty facilitators. The teams then participate in a problem-solving exercise focused on the “hot topic”.
Modified Texture Swallowing is a three-hour inter-professional education event exploring the challenges of nutrition, eating, and feeding where adaptive technologies may be required. Faculty and students have an opportunity to articulate their profession’s roles and responsibilities related to supporting nutritional intake of their clients within their scope of practice.
BCHW is a three-hour interactive interprofessional learning experience for students in the CHBS. This workshop provides a forum for students and faculty across disciplines to examine personal, professional and organizational dynamics that influence the quality of their patient care and their interactions with colleagues.
This is a three-hour poverty simulation experience developed by the Reform Organization of Welfare Education Association of Missouri (ROWL). It is designed to sensitize students to the realities faced by low-income families. The simulation places participants “in the shoes” of a family member in a low socioeconomic situation. Students reflect on the experience and apply interprofessional/interdisciplinary concepts to address the individual and systemic issues associated with life in the state of poverty.
MSC 4101
235 Martin Luther King Jr. Way
Harrisonburg, Virginia 22807
