A comparison of medical and pharmacy student perspectives of a clinical interprofessional home-visit versus a virtual interprofessional workshop

Background: No Place Like Home is a clinical interprofessional education (IPE) activity whereby pharmacy and medical students conduct home visits under the guidance and supervision of a clinical preceptor to homebound patients. Purpose: We examined pharmacy and medical student perceptions of mastery of interprofessional competencies during an in-person clinical home visit pre-COVID-19 pandemic versus a virtual IPE learning activity consisting of didactic and case discussions in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: We administered the same modified Interprofessional Collaborative Competency Attainment Survey (ICCAS) instrument, which uses a five-point Likert scale, to both the in-person and the virtual IPE students following their learning activity. Results: We received a total of 459 completed survey responses with an overall response rate of 84%. For both groups of students, the in-person format was preferred, however, to our surprise, the results indicated that students in the virtual group reported greater perceived gain in interprofessional skills than students in the in-person group. In addition, pharmacy students perceived greater gain from the interprofessional activity and offered more thoughtful reflections about their experience. Conclusions: Even though both groups of students preferred the in-person visit, the IPE objectives were equally (for medical students) or better (for pharmacy students) absorbed in the virtual environment than the in-person clinical home visit.