Campaign P R I O R I T Y : Innovations Create new interdisciplinary partnerships and centers of excellence to offer students and faculty the right environments for meaningful research and learning experiences that will expand the university’s ability to solve complex local and global challenges through inquiry and discovery.
‘More of a team effort’ VCU’s Web-based course Interprofessional Virtual Geriatrics Case is changing how the next generation of health care professionals is trained by breaking down traditional silos and forcing students to collaborate across disciplines. The innovative and interactive course format was first offered in 2010. By the end of the 2015-16 academic year, more than 1,500 senior students from VCU’s schools of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy and Social Work had trained in this semester-long program. Working in interdisciplinary teams of about six, the students are assigned a fictional, complex geriatric case scenario, with each student receiving only the information typically available to that student’s discipline. They must use an electronic record simulator to share information and determine the best course of care on a discussion board, which helps the team answer 65 challenging multiple-answer questions that reflect real-world situations. The course was created with support from a $1 million grant from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. VCU was one of just 10 institutions in the country selected to receive the four-year funding. “In health care, it’s sometimes hard to voice your opinion because of hierarchy and tradition,” says Alan Dow, M.D. (H.S.’04/M; M.S.H.A.’05/AHP), VCU assistant vice president of health sciences for interprofessional education and the Ruth and Seymour Perlin Professor of Medicine and Health Administration. “Through these programs, we’re increasing what we refer to as ‘psychological safety,’ by making students feel more comfortable in voicing their ideas and opinions.” Dow co-created the course with Peter A. Boling, M.D. (H.S.’84/M), professor of internal medicine and chair of the VCU Division of Geriatric Medicine. While traditional, team-based projects often lead to one or two students dominating discussions or driving progress, VCU’s course, by design, doesn’t afford any one team member enough information to form a correct analysis, Dow says. Instead, students must listen to and use the input of other disciplines to arrive at a case decision. “This type of learning is so different from traditional lecture- or group-based models,” says David Goldberg, M.D. (M.D.’16/M), a previous online course participant. “More than anything, I think it showed us that medicine is becoming more of a team effort.”
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VCU Alumni
Alan Dow, M.D. (clockwise from front), Pamela Parsons, Ph.D., RN, Clinical Associate Professor, School of Nursing; Aaron Ramirez, a second-year student in the School of Medicine; Kelechi C. Ogbonna, Pharm.D., associate professor, School of Pharmacy; and Michelle McGregor (M.Ed.’11/E), dental hygiene program director, School of Dentistry Photo illustration University Marketing