The College of Pharmacy’s first interprofessional patient simulation experience, held Thursday, January 21, was deemed an overwhelming success by participating faculty and students. This joint teaching venture involved seven third year pharmacy students enrolled in the CoP’s IPE Simulation elective, who worked with team from the entire class of second year medical students in caring for a patient with diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA). The experience took place in the Medical Partnership’s new Simulation Center, located on the Health Science Campus and populated with state-of-the-art mannequins and exam suites. The teams worked together to diagnose, manage, and triage their simulated patient, and later met to discuss team dynamics, clinical pearls, and how this experience will help them prepare them for clinical rotations and ultimately becoming practitioners. In addition to the pharmacy and medical students working together, this was also an opportunity for faculty from both colleges to interact, teach concurrently, and model how a healthcare team enhances the care of our patient.

Participating students included Gabby Pineda Mendoza, Kelsey Bouwman, Brianna Beldon, Sara Niazi, Lexus Chen, Kendall Anderson, and McKenzie Hodges. Pharmacy faculty included Drs. Aull, Fleming, Huang, Southwood, Lavender, and Brown.

This elective will continue for 12 weeks. Students will participate in two more team-based patient simulations and CoP faculty will teach three more experiences.