International Journal of Healthcare Simulation

Background:

Accurate assessment of potential hazards and challenges within a home environment is essential to ensure the safety of our patients both post-discharge from hospital and within the community. Inter-professional education in this area allows students to learn from, with and about each other to provide more effective patient care. COVID-19 challenged the Arkansas Interprofessional Education Consortium (ARIPEC) to develop meaningful inter-professional activities while minimizing COVID-19 risk ^[1].

Aims:

The aim of the study was to create and deliver a novel virtual home assessment simulation for inter-professional learners to improve the performance of home assessments state-wide.

Method:

Faculty from three universities created rooms within a simulated home assessment environment illustrating patient characteristics, hazards, habits and interpersonal considerations. Each university created and video recorded one simulated room (kitchen, bedroom and living room) which were combined in one video to represent a home. Students received pre-course material including education on the INHOMES tool and learning objectives before the virtual learning event. The brief included education on the importance of home assessment and the INHOMEs tool. The simulated home video was played to all students who subsequently were split into break-out rooms with facilitators. In inter-professional groups, students created action plans for immediate needs and for when weight-bearing status allowed increased mobility and identified professionals required to meet needs. Following this debriefs occurred in break-out rooms and then as a large group to summarize and identify take-aways. All students completed a pre-/post-questionnaire including the Interprofessional Collaborative Competency Attainment Survey (ICCAS) and evaluation of simulation methodology, home assessment and overall impression. Mean scores for 5-point Likert scores are reported.

Results:

In total, 400 students participated in the 2021 event, including medical, pharmacy, physician assistant, dental hygiene, communication science disorders, physical and occupational therapy, addiction studies, respiratory care, radiography, public health, sonography and nursing. All ICCAS metrics increased pre- to post-evaluation. See Table 1.

Table 1:

Student evaluation data from the simulated home environment assessment activity

Quality assessed	Mean Likert score (1 – strongly disagree, 5 – strongly agree)
Improve confidence	4.32
Improve communication skills	4.34
Improve reasoning skills	4.41
Improve decision-making skills	4.41
Helpful for professional development	4.46
More comfortable in completing home assessment to identify safety hazards and concerns	4.48
More comfortable to identify team members to meet the immediate and long-term needs of a patient with pain and limited mobility	4.48
The activity demonstrated the value of providing team-based home assessment education	4.54
Overall was a valuable educational activity	4.48
Simulation video portrayed the simulated environment well	4.5
Simulation video gave constructive indicators to identify patient characteristics and behaviours	4.53
Simulation provided an effective mechanism to learn home assessment using the INHOMES tool	4.52

Implications for practice:

Our results demonstrate that a video-recorded simulated home environment event is successful in supporting the development of an inter-professional action plan for a home assessment using the INHOMES assessment tool. The collaborative creation of this event was essential due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the efficacy for learning demonstrates the utility of this approach in the post-pandemic area. Virtual simulations increase accessibility for inter-professional learners to learn from, with and about each other for the benefit of our patients.