Abstract—Interprofessional education (IPE) helps fostering
collaboration between pharmacy (PH) and medical (MD)
students. However, the effectiveness of conducting IPE virtually
has not been tested. This study aimed to evaluate the
effectiveness of virtual IPE activity among PH and MD students.
A pre-post analytical cohort study was conducted among
second-year PH and MD students. The students were divided
into groups, which consisted of both MD and PH students. The
students from the two disciplines had to work on a clinical case
and present it creatively. All the sessions were conducted
virtually. The students’ team-based competencies were
measured before and after the IPE activity using a
self-administered Interprofessional Collaboration Competency
Attainment (ICCA). Students’ responses were analyzed using a
paired t-test in SPSS, version 26. P-value less than 0.05 was
considered to show significant changes in the students’
competencies before and after attending the IPE activity. The
mean competencies score of the students before the IPE was
97.8±25.2 and improved to 107.9±21.4 after the activity. A
paired t-test showed a significant increase in competencies score,
p < 0.05. More than half of the students (54.3%) had adequate
team-based competencies after the virtual IPE activity. Online
learning is not a barrier to cultivating collaboration and
knowledge sharing between two disciplines, and virtual IPE was
effective in fostering interprofessional experiential learning
among students. As there is a lack of sustainable data and
qualified faculties to fully address the implementation of IPE
programs, this research can act as a guide to support the needs
and identify the challenges around such implementation of IPE
program in future academic curriculums.
Index Terms—Interprofessional education, virtual,
pharmacy, medical.
Ganesh Sritheran Paneerselvam is with the School of Pharmacy, Taylor‘s
University, Malaysia (e-mail: ganesh_alei@hotmail.com).
Cite: Ganesh Sritheran Paneerselvam, "Effectiveness of Conducting Interprofessional Education Virtually among Pharmacy and Medical Students," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 12, no. 10, pp. 1065-1070, 2022.
Copyright © 2022 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).