Faculty members are encouraged to document their IPE certification and participation in IPE events. If you have questions, please contact the Office of Interprofessional Education at (501)686-5686 or email IPE@uams.edu.

Interprofessional Collaborative Research involves the active engagement of two or more professions or disciplines in a research project, with the highest degree of integrated collaboration — all members of the research team are equally involved in the research process from start to finish.

In this context, profession is defined as a paid occupation, especially one that involves prolonged training and a formal qualification and discipline is defined as a branch of knowledge, typically one studied in higher education. Thus collaborative researchers might include those from different academic disciplines (physics, chemistry, biology, statistics, computer science, economics, sociology, psychology, education, etc.) or professionals (health care administrator, statistician, educator, researcher, nurse, physician, etc.).

Team-based, interprofessional/interdisciplinary collaborative researchers will work together to:

• Identify common interests, questions, and hypotheses
• Design the research project
• Interpret the results in terms of their significance and implications
• Disseminate research findings broadly across multiple professional groups for maximum impact

Collaborative researchers respect the knowledge that each participant brings to the discussion so that together they might know better how to understand complex problems, and can include a wide range of research areas including basic science, clinical research, educational science, and community research.

Specifically, the Office of IPE provides learning experiences that teach researchers how to create and enhance the quality of their research collaborations. These offerings will assist in promoting more team-based science to collaboratively investigate complex problems and further scientific knowledge. These offerings will underscore the UAMS culture of collaboration, as well as the core competency domains for interprofessional collaborative research that is integrated within that culture.

Patient- and family-centered care is a central tenet in the clinical environment at UAMS. Health care reform has led to the consideration of interprofessional team-based, collaborative care as a way to provide comprehensive care to patients and their families.

Many clinicians at UAMS wish to move from solo practice to an interprofessional collaborative practice, but are unsure of the steps or skills necessary. The Office of Interprofessional Education has developed evidence-based programs dedicated to faculty skill development in how to build an interprofessional collaborative team.

In addition, these offerings will provide activities for faculty to develop the four core competency domains of high-quality interprofessional team-based care that keeps patients and their needs first: teamwork, understanding and coordinating roles/responsibilities, effective communication and developing a culture of shared values/ethics.

Delivery of quality care to provide comprehensive health care services for patients and their families is challenging and complex. Fostering collaborative, integrated care and evidence-based care models that implicate specific skill acquisition in addition to didactic learning that is evidence-based is key. Specifically, we will provide learning experiences that target skills that research has shown to enhance the quality of clinical collaborations and team-based care, reduce safety events and positively impact patient- and family- engagement and satisfaction in the care environment. These offerings will underscore the UAMS culture of patient- and family-centeredness and the core competency domains for interprofessional collaborative practice that are integrated within that culture.

A facilitator skills workshop (IPE 201) is available. Attendees learn facilitator skills needed for working with interprofessional groups of learners.

Also, participants engage in active/experiential learning activities focused on adapting existing learning experiences from solo professional to interprofessional and/or the creative design and implementation of a new IPE event. Further, they will be collaboratively led by an interprofessional group of co-presenters, who will model interprofessional collaboration skills while teaching.

Already facilitating IPE events?  Click here for information about our Exemption Policy

The Office of IPE recognizes that there are UAMS faculty among us who are already engaged in interprofessional education activities and have been for some time.  While you still can participate in our IPE Facilitator and Master Facilitator certification processes, some of you may wish to be acknowledged for your already-existing expertise in IPE facilitation.

If so, please submit the online form found HERE for review by the Office of IPE Faculty Development Committee.  Be sure to be specific and include dates of participation. You will also need to include a PDF version of your current CV.

Information needed for IPE  Certification Special Exemption:

• Please list each of the IPE events you have facilitated (it is acceptable to copy/paste from your CV) and add the name and profession of all co-presenters for that event, as well as the professions in which the student attendees are training. Most importantly, describe how interprofessional learners are learning about, from, and with each other and which core competencies you think are skills being developed during the event (teamwork, shared values/ethics, communication, and/or understanding roles/responsibilities).
• Please note that there are two different types of certification. Effective facilitation of one type of IPE event (e.g., exposure workshop, research project advisor, movie review, 12th Street preceptor, etc) is termed IPE Facilitator Certification.  Effective facilitation of three or more types of IPE events is termed Master IPE Facilitator Certification. If upon review of your materials the Office of IPE Faculty Development Committee is unable to determine the nature/extent of your IPE facilitation activities the Committee may request additional information and/or observe your facilitation of your IPE event.

Academic Health Centers have been called to develop a strategic plan to integrate student learning across colleges to better prepare our future workforce to practice, teach, and research together.  Experienced interprofessional faculty facilitators are needed to provide diverse perspectives and add creativity and quality in the design and implementation of the IPE student curriculum.  To do this, a bank of engaged faculty trained to design and/or facilitate these IPE learning events is needed.  A UAMS IPE Certification process was created to develop this bank of engaged and trained faculty facilitators.

The IPE 101 seminar is the first step in the UAMS IPE Certification process.  This one-hour didactic provides an overview of the IPE movement, and the need for collaborative skills that facilitate team-based endeavors in clinical, educational, and research settings in which our diverse faculty work.

The second step of the UAMS IPE Certification process is a training workshop (201E: Facilitator Skills and IPE Event Design) for faculty to build their design and facilitation skills for IPE events through active learning experiences.

The last step is co-leading an IPE student or faculty event with an experienced co-facilitator (301E: Facilitated Shadow and/or Event Co-Lead).

Make sure to utilize all the information on our Faculty Development Workshop page here!

Check out our full facilitator sign-up for a list of ALL the student events we do.
If you see an event on this list that doesn’t have a 301E associated with it, please send us an email and we will work with you to get you trained.

Continuing education credits for most professions is available for all three events.  This observation will lead to quantitative and qualitative structured, confidential feedback.

Successful completion of this 3-step process earns a certificate stating the individual is a UAMS IPE Facilitator who is capable of facilitating that type of IPE event independently. Certification as an IPE Master Facilitator can also be obtained by completing this process for three different types of events.

Value of certification is enhanced by the UAMS Deans’ support from all 5 Colleges and the Graduate School.  The Deans instructed the promotion and tenure committees at all colleges of this value during their deliberations, as well as the value of interprofessional or interdisciplinary work in general.

The opportunity for certification is advertised across colleges at live events as well as via emailed faculty development invitations.

If faculty are already involved in facilitating IPE student or faculty events on campus, they may wish to skip the training process and apply for certification via our Exemption Policy.