Unintended Consequences of a Transition to Synchronous, Virtual Simulations for Interprofessional Learners

The coronavirus pandemic shifted in-person environments to virtual environments. Little is known about the effectiveness of fully synchronous, virtual interprofessional education (IPE). This study aims to compare two IPE cases that occurred in-person pre-pandemic and virtual during-pandemic. Two cases are analyzed: a medical error care and a charity care case. Participants were students from various health science disciplines. Assessments were captured through The Interprofessional Collaborative Competency Attainment Survey (ICCAS). Effect sizes were calculated for the pre-and post-surveys and analyzed using Cohen’s d for independent samples. From the in-person collection period, a total of 479 students participated in the medical error simulation and 479 in the charity care simulation. During the virtual collection period, a total of 506 students participated in the medical error simulation and 507 participated in the charity care simulation. In the data for the virtual simulations, the medical error case study maintained a large effect size (0.81) while the charity care simulation had a lesser impact (0.64 effect size). Structural details of the patient cases may be a critical variable. Future research is needed to better understand how health science students can obtain more training to notice the subtle cues from patients assessed through telemedicine modalities.