We would like to extend our congratulations on behalf of the TBLC to this year’s poster award winners: Annette Burgess and Deborah M. McGregor. Their poster abstract was titled “Interprofessional Team-based learning (TBL) in health professional education: a systematic review.” As the lead presenter, TBLC is pleased to announce that Annette Burgess will receive one year of free membership for winning.
Interprofessional Team-based learning (TBL) in health professional education: a systematic review.
Background: Use of TBL in interprofessional education (IPE) has increased over the past decade, applied within health professional degree programs as a means of engaging students in small-group interprofessional teamwork. TBL has been adopted and delivered in varied formats, across diverse IPE contexts and content areas. We conducted this systematic review to establish the extent, design, and practice of interprofessional TBL within medical and health professional university degree programs.
Methods: We searched PubMed, CINAHL, Web of Science and ERIC databases for articles describing TBL involving student representation from multiple health profession degree programs published between 2010 and 2020. Included original research articles were assessed and described according to Haidet et al’s seven core TBL design elements: team formation, readiness assurance, immediate feedback, sequencing of in-class problem solving, the four S’s (significant problem, same problem, specific choice, and simultaneous reporting), incentive structure, and peer review.
Results: Twelve articles satisfied the inclusion criteria. Significant variability was noted in the application and reporting of the seven core TBL design elements. Although the structured format of TBL provided a suitable pedagogy for interprofessional education, some challenges to the implementation of interprofessional TBL were identified.
Conclusions: Most articles reported the TBL format provided a positive interprofessional learning experience. However, we identified some of challenges: the unequal distribution of students to teams as a result of multiple disciplines from different programs; varied levels of student experience with the pedagogy of TBL; resources required for large groups of students to suit the TBL format; timetabling requirements; continuity of TBL sessions; design of patient cases to suit multiple disciplines; alignment of topics within curricula of multiple disciplines and programs; and limited opportunity for peer review. Key to successful interprofessional TBL is curricula alignment and integration; equal distribution of disciplines within teams; suitable patient cases; and provision of student training/guidelines in TBL.
Thank you and congratulations again to our presenters. Abstracts for the TBLC 2023 Annual Conference will be accepted this September and we encourage you all to submit!
