Better Teams, Better Care: The Role of IPE in Medical Education

When patients enter the healthcare system, they are rarely cared for by a single provider. Instead, they encounter a coordinated team that can include physicians, nurses, pharmacists, therapists, social workers, and others. The patient’s expectation is simple: the team should communicate clearly, share information responsibly, and work together seamlessly. However, teamwork is not automatic. Communication, collaboration, and shared responsibility are skills that must be intentionally taught, practiced, and evaluated. 

Interprofessional Education (IPE) in the School of Medicine prepares students to deliver patient-centered care by learning with other health professions. In the preclinical curriculum, students are introduced to core IPE competencies through didactic sessions in the Introduction to the Medical Profession courses. The most impactful learning occurs in the interactive experiences during the M2 year. In these settings, students progress from recognizing complex problems to managing them collaboratively.

Key learning opportunities include:

• The Domestic Violence Simulation, which brings together learners from Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Dentistry, and Social Work in partnership with Jackson State University. In this trauma-informed exercise, students identify and assess intimate partner violence, practice safety planning and counseling, and make warm handoffs to community resources. These skills mirror the coordinated response real patients need.
• The Pain Management Series is delivered across three touchpoints in the M2 curriculum. The first focuses on acute pain and evidence-based analgesia. The second addresses chronic pain and multimodal strategies, functional goals, and risk mitigation. The capstone centers on substance misuse, where students practice stigma-free communication, brief interventions, and linkage to treatment. Learners work in authentic interprofessional teams to assess simulated patients, build care plans, and coordinate follow-up. These experiences reinforce role clarity, communication, and handoff skills.

At UMMC, IPE is coordinated through the Office of Academic Affairs in collaboration with program leads from each discipline, including course directors, simulation faculty, and professional staff support planning and implementation. Sessions are followed by structured debriefs and embedded assessments to ensure students meet measurable objectives for collaboration.

These activities matter because a strong body of research shows that interprofessional collaboration reduces medical errors, increases patient satisfaction, improves care transitions, and strengthens long-term health outcomes. This impact is especially clear in sensitive scenarios such as intimate partner violence, chronic pain, and substance use, where communication gaps can have serious consequences.

By learning with and from other disciplines, students develop the communication, respect, and shared decision-making skills that patients expect and modern healthcare requires. For more information about IPE training for medical students, please get in touch with our instructional designer, Leah Stanford.