-
Embedding Interprofessional Education in Pediatric Clerkships: Lessons from Nebraska’s Tracking Infant Progress Statewide (TIPS) Program
Grace E. Berentson, Liliana Bronner, Paige Hardy, Neil Kalsi, Brianna Brei, and Kerry Miller
Background: NICU graduates experience disproportionate developmental and health challenges. Their families face barriers to equitable care including access to coordinated follow-up services. Traditional medical education rarely exposes students to authentic interprofessional models of care that address these inequities. The Tracking Infant Progress Statewide (TIPS) program provides developmental, social, and medical follow-up for NICU graduates across Nebraska, bringing together physicians, nurse practitioners, child developmental specialists, and nurses in a single family-centered visit. Embedding third-year medical students into this setting models collaborative practice, builds understanding of interprofessional competencies, and fosters awareness of systemic inequities affecting NICU families. This innovative curricular approach differs from the traditional siloed medical clerkship education and addresses gaps in interprofessional clinical practice exposure.
Objectives: To design an innovative interprofessional learning experience for third-year medical students during their pediatric rotation, enhancing understanding of how collaborative practice enables providers to efficiently and comprehensively address the health needs of patients and families.
Methods: A total of 302 third-year medical students at the University of Nebraska Medical Center attended a half-day session at the TIPS clinic within the Munroe Meyer Institute. Prior to the sessions, students read Building a System of Child Find Through a 3-Tiered Model of Follow-up. They observed the visits via live feed to minimize clinical disruptions. Following the visits, students engaged in a thirty-minute discussion with the providers, reflecting on the visits and asking questions. Each student completed an open-ended question about their observations and insights regarding interprofessional competencies allowing for qualitative analysis. Qualitative data was analyzed using Braun & Clarke’s (2006) six-phase thematic analysis framework.
Results: Qualitative themes highlighted that 1) students consistently observed how distinct professional contributions complemented one-another, 2) family-centered dialogue and unified messaging reassured caregivers and built trust, 3) team synergy reduced family burdens, and enhanced efficiency, thoroughness, and quality of patient care. The results show that modeling collaborative practice serves as an effective educational model for enriching trainee understanding of interprofessional competencies and professional identity development, underscoring the value of integrating interprofessional models into medical education.
Discussion: The TIPS clinic observational experience enriched pediatric clerkship training and served as an effective interprofessional educational model. Students not only observed collaborative behaviors that enhanced family-centered outcomes but also reflected on how these experiences shaped their emerging professional identities. This innovation demonstrates that interprofessional practice can serve as both a clinical model and an educational imperative for preparing physicians to deliver collaborative, family-centered care.
-
Establishing qualifying a generalized autoclitic repertoire in children with autism spectrum disorder
Todd Owen and Nicole Rodriguez
Autoclitics are secondary verbal operants that are controlled by a feature of the conditions that evoke a primary verbal operant (e.g., tact, mand). Among the types described by Skinner, qualifying autoclitics extend, negate, or assert a speaker’s primary verbal response and modify the intensity or direction of the listener’s behavior. In the only study to date on teaching qualifying autoclitics, Howard and Rice (1988) established generalized autoclitics that indicated weak stimulus control (e.g., “like a [primary tact]”) with four typically developing preschool children. However, generalization to newly acquired tacts was limited. In Experiment 1, we extended Howard and Rice to autistic children while using simultaneous teaching procedures and assessing for generalization across sets and newly acquired tacts. In Experiment 2, we evaluated the effects of multiple exemplar training on generalization of autoclitics across sets of naturalistic stimuli when generalization of autoclitics taught with shapes and textual characters did not occur.
Printing is not supported at the primary Gallery Thumbnail page. Please first navigate to a specific Image before printing.
