Interprofessional Training for School-Based Mental Health Students

Background and Purpose:

In school settings, Interprofessional Collaboration (IPC) involves coordinated decision-making among educators, administrators, and support staff to address the needs of students and the broader school community (Bates et al., 2019; World Health Organization, 2010). Interprofessional education (IPE) prepares professionals to work collaboratively across disciplines (World Health Organization, 2010). However, professional training programs often operate in silos, limiting the opportunities for students from different professions to learn together and develop an understanding of each other's roles (Almendingen et al., 2019). While healthcare professions have created an IPE infrastructure, it appears most school-based professional training programs have not.

Methods

Promoting Rural Innovations in Mental health Enhancement (PRIME) is a collaboration between a state university and rural school districts to provide graduate level coursework, ongoing training and high-quality mentorship in the fields of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), social work and professional counseling. The PRIME team implemented a school-based interprofessional practice preparation training, All Professions Day (APD) that introduced the IPEC four core competencies (2023): (1) Values and Ethics, (2) Roles and Responsibilities, (3) Interprofessional Communication, and (4) Teams and Teamwork.

A total of twenty-one graduate students participated in APD which was evaluated with a pre- and post-test that included an informed consent, demographic questions, questions about their perceptions of interprofessional collaboration using the Interprofessional Team Attitudes and Skills K-12 (ITASK) instrument. The ITASK was developed to measure students’ knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions of skills related to school-based interprofessional collaboration.

Results

Twenty participants completed the pre-test; Eighteen completed both pre- and post-tests; 60% (n = 12) were ABA, 35% (n = 7) were professional counseling, and 5% (n = 1) were social work. The majority were aged 20-29 years old (n = 8;40%) with 25% (n=5) aged 30-39 and 30% (n=6) aged 40-49, one participant was over 50. A paired-sample t-test compared pre and posttest ITASK scores. Results indicate a statistically significant difference between pre- (M = 4.23; SD = 0.46) and post-survey scores (M = 4.73; SD = 0.35); (-.50275) t (13) = -4.2, p = .001. These findings suggest that following the APD event, participants’ perceptions of how interprofessional collaboration impacts their practice improved. A total of 16 out of 26 survey items showed a statistical significance following question-specific paired-sample t-test analysis. These results indicate that participants’ understanding of the roles and requirements of other professions improved and perceptions of how IPC can support k12 student success increased.

Conclusions & Implications:

The findings of the APD training event indicate that a structured, single-day IPE experience can significantly influence graduate students' attitudes and perceptions of collaborative practice. This outcome aligns with existing literature on the benefits of IPE, which emphasizes that when individuals from different professional backgrounds learn with, from, and about each other, they develop a better understanding of roles, foster mutual respect, and build essential communication and teamwork skills (Testa & Renwick, 2020; World Health Organization, 2010).