Abbas Tavakoli

Health professional academic programs require interprofessional education (IPE) to meet accreditation standards and better prepare students for collaborative patient care. The Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) includes the roles and responsibilities of the health professions as a key domain of IPE curricula. A learning module focusing on this domain was developed for an interprofessional introductory course involving 12 health professions. Adaptations to this module over time aimed to enhance content and student knowledge. Students were assigned to small interprofessional teams throughout the course and completed modules aligned with the IPEC core competencies. The first module highlighted roles and responsibilities. Students submitted assignments related to their health profession asynchronously, prior to a live class session during which they explored their professions in small groups. A debriefing session with the entire class summarized student responses. Facilitators representing all included health professions moderated team discussions and contributed to the debriefing. During a 2-year period, 1,093 students completed this module. There was a statistically significant improvement from the 2024 to 2025 session regarding increased knowledge of roles and responsibilities of other health professions (P = .0254). Student evaluations indicated an overwhelmingly positive response to content related to the roles and responsibilities of other professions. This approach allowed students to enhance their knowledge of other health professions’ roles in interprofessional work and compare them to their own roles and responsibilities. Enhancement of the roles and responsibilities module provided a strategic approach for interprofessional students to learn about multiple other health professions.

Depressive disorders are common mental health conditions that are often undiagnosed or undertreated. Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioners (AGACNPs) are educated in the management of acute and critically ill patients but are often uncomfortable identifying and treating mental health conditions. Telehealth instruction is useful in mental healthcare and is required as part of the AGACNP’s efficient patient care competencies. This article reports findings from a mental health-focused telehealth instructional activity integrated into an existing AGACNP curriculum. This instructional activity was designed to introduce students to telehealth delivery and build AGACNP competencies using telehealth technology to assess patients with depressive mood symptoms. A two-part instructional scenario included didactic course preparation and an experiential activity involving a virtual encounter with a standardized patient (SP). Student feedback on the telehealth experience was generally positive. However, they felt uncomfortable with the mental health component of the scenario, providing an opportunity for improved preparation of mental health screening and treatment.

The Chronic Illness Quality of Life Ladder (CIQOLL) underwent psychometric testing in a sample of 278 women with HIV disease. The CIQOLL, a self-anchoring striving scale based on Cantril’s Ladder, measures seven domains (physical , emotional, financial, family and friends, spiritual well-being, peace of mind, and overall life satisfaction) across four time periods (present, past, future, life without a diagnosis of HIV). The domains were derived from focus groups with persons with HIV disease. Women with a diagnosis of HIV Infection, age 18 or older, residing in rural areas in the southeastern United States, completed questionnaires that measured physical functioning, HIV related symptom frequency and distress, depressive symptoms, social support, and quality of life. Procedures used to assess reliability included item–item, item–total, and subscale–subscale correlations, and Chronbach’s coefficient α. Criterion-related (concurrent) validity was assessed by correlating the CIQOLL with HIV symptoms, functional status and social support. Construct validity was estimated using factor analysis and predictive modeling. Results provide preliminary evidence that the CIQOLL is a reliable and valid scale that may provide meaningful information about persons living with a chronic illness, such as HIV disease, especially low literacy and unacculturated populations. Additional research is needed to weight the domains, test the sensitivity of the scale to changes over time, and explore the usefulness of discrepancy scores.

Health care safety improvement focuses on redesign of high-risk health care processes such as the medication administration process (MAP) to enhance safety and reduce errors. A key limitation of MAP redesign efforts is the lack of validated tools by which to accurately record process observations. This paper discusses a pilot study conducted to develop and evaluate a handheld device application for recording observations of oral MAP functions and tasks. The aim of the study was to leverage existing technology to develop an observation recording device comparable to handwritten recordings commonly used to document workflow observations in health care settings. Device recordings were statistically compared to handwritten recordings of the same MAP functions and tasks. Findings provided preliminary evidence that handheld device recordings were consistent with handwritten recordings for documenting task duration but not task sequence. Interruptions were not examined due to insufficient data and additional research is needed.