“The earlier interprofessional education is introduced in nursing education, the better off the students will do in all settings – from the classroom to the hospital and the community,” said Heather Peralta, an adjunct instructor at the College of Nursing who established the student-led interprofessional clinic for farmworkers in the Apopka community.

Preparing a “collaborative practice-ready” health care workforce is necessary, according to the World Health Organization. WHO, along with the landmark Institute of Medicine “Future of Nursing” report, the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education and the National League for Nursing, have acknowledged interprofessional collaboration – from education to delivery – is key to health care’s future. It provides safer, quality care that is more efficient and cost effective, improving patient outcomes and ultimately the health of the community.

Multiple collaborative learning programs

Through interprofessional education, students learn interdisciplinary communication skills, an understanding of the roles and scopes of practice of each discipline, and develop mutual trust and respect.

Opportunities for interprofessional education are available for undergraduate and graduate students, and include hands-on clinical experiences, collaborative patient care and clinical scenarios followed by interactive discussion, and simulated learning.

For example, graduate students in the Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner program collaborate with students from the Athletic Training program annually in a one-day event to learn to assess, diagnose and manage sports-related acute conditions such as concussions and spinal injuries.

“Students have learned a tremendous amount from the experience,” said Christopher W. Blackwell, associate professor and director of the adult-gerontology acute care nurse practitioner program. “It is essential because all nurses, whether practicing at the bedside or in an advanced practice role, have to work with professionals in other disciplines to provide patient care.”

Nursing instructor Nancy Duckworth organizes three interprofessional education events annually where undergraduate nursing students from the Orlando and Cocoa campuses collaborate with students from the College of Medicine, the School of Social Work, the Physical Therapy program and the şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of Florida College of Pharmacy in Orlando. In a recent training, students worked together leveraging their unique skill sets and knowledge to create a comprehensive wellness care plan for geriatric patients. “Working as a team allows everyone a chance to feel valued and participate as an active member of patient care to ultimately improve outcomes,” said Duckworth.

Through these learning experiences, students also gain confidence in their skills and abilities. Nursing student Barbara King of Merritt Island, Florida, participated in three interprofessional education events, including one at the College of Medicine focused on global health care. The event included three simulated workshops – improvised medicine, mass triage and prisoner’s health care. “This is a great way for other professions to see what nurses are experts in and vice versa,” said King, who graduated with her Bachelor of Science in Nursing earlier this month. “For example, I was able to teach my group the proper way to measure someone for an NG tube and check placement afterward, while I was able to learn from others the proper way to apply assistive devices such as tourniquets and splints.”

When multiple disciplines come together to care for patients, the community also benefits. In the future, communities will reap the rewards of these “collaborative practice-ready” professionals – like the one in Central Florida is already. Since July 2016, more than 80 students have provided free health care to more than 450 patients in an underserved community of Apopka. The interprofessional education program has received national recognition from the U.S. Public Health Service and Interprofessional Education Collaborative.

Forging a bright future together

These efforts are just the beginning. As one of the nation’s largest universities, UCF is leveraging its strengths in health care to create an Academic Health Sciences Center at Lake Nona Medical City in Orlando.

This unique interdisciplinary center will bring together the College of Medicine, College of Nursing, and a new College of Health Professions and Sciences on the 50-acre, state-of-the-art UCF Health Sciences campus at the global destination for medical innovation in Lake Nona.

Through the Academic Health Sciences Center, UCF will continue to be at the forefront of health care education. “The eventual move to Lake Nona will provide our students even greater opportunity to work more closely as a team with other health care disciplines,” said Duckworth.

“Being a part of the new Academic Health Sciences Campus is so important as we will be able to do more interprofessional education, working together for the betterment of all communities in Florida and beyond,” adds Peralta.

Carlos Gual, an instructor in COHPA’s Athletic Training Program, collaborated with Christopher Blackwell, an associate professor in the College of Nursing, to come up with the curriculum for the training.

“The AT program director reached out to me and asked if I’d be interested in partnering with Athletic Training to conduct an IPE simulation with their students and the Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner students,” said Blackwell, who is an advanced practice nurse and holds a PhD in public affairs. “And I said yes.”

“It was great,” added Gual. “You could see the eyes on both sides opening up and appreciating what the other side of the profession does.”

Gaul selected students from the newest athletic training cohort to give them a chance to practice their newfound knowledge.

Junior Alaina Locus is one of the athletic training students who attended and appreciated the opportunity.

“It gave me an opportunity to review the stuff we just learned, so I could be better prepared to do this in the real world,” she said.

Jenn Leuzinger, a nursing student, thought it was a great opportunity to learn and simultaneously practice what was being taught in the classroom.

“This event was beneficial due to its well-planned format: an overview provided at the beginning, the opportunity to apply proper technique and management in a variety of scenarios, followed by a debriefing of each one along with some feedback,” she said. “Although the scope of information provided is specific, the importance of it in regards to injury prevention is significant.”

Gual said the success of the program has prompted him to consider hosting the event annually. “To be put in a setting to know what happens when the patient leaves you, it better equips you for the situation.”

Both Locus and Leuzinger agreed that they would participate in similar trainings again. “It gives you a different perspective and a different learning environment to put your skills to the test,” Locus added.

The two organizations selected UCF as the recipient of their first Public Health Excellence in Interprofessional Education Collaboration Award that honors interdisciplinary healthcare teams that significantly impact the community they serve.

Since last summer, students and faculty from UCF’s medical, nursing, physical therapy and social work schools and the şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of Florida’s pharmacy school have worked together to provide free care in internal medicine, pediatrics, OB-GYN, dermatology, ophthalmology and occupational medicine. At each of the four clinics held so far, teams have treated 40 to 80 patients ranging from 2 months to more than 70 years in a makeshift clinic at the Farmworker Association of Florida office in Apopka.

Dr. Heather Peralta, a UCF nursing faculty member who lives in Apopka, helped organize the interprofessional effort. “Watching all of the students work seamlessly together for the good of this under-served population is something that I will treasure as an instructor, as a nurse, and as an Apopkan,” she said. “Big things can grow from tiny seeds.”

National officials said they selected UCF’s program because it exemplified excellence in teamwork to serve a medically underserved community. “Interprofessional health care practice is achievable and it works,” said Dr. Richard W. Valachovic, president of IPEC and president and CEO of the American Dental Education Association. “We applaud the students and faculty of the şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ąâ€¦ for showing that if we educate health professionals together, patients and the entire health care system benefit.”

Dr. Judy Simms-Cendan, director of international experiences, and associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the College of Medicine, helped organize the farmworker clinics after leading medical mission trips to the Dominican Republic for the last several years.

“It was a great teaching opportunity and a really rich environment to learn in for all the students involved,” Dr. Simms-Cendan said of the Apopka effort.   “Students got to see, for example, how the social workers knew how to refer people for resources, learned how to do assessments, how to triage, and how to take vitals. You learn so much in a real environment like this where everyone is pitched in with the same goal of caring for people.”

Jeannie Economos, the Farmworker Association’s pesticide safety and environmental health project coordinator, said the clinics helped farmworkers deal with chronic conditions like hypertension and diabetes and treat health issues related to their exposure to pesticides and other chemicals.

“This award is indeed an honor to everyone who worked with such compassion and dedication to pull it all together to make the clinics happen and to build the partnership to bring this important service and benefit to the community,” she said.”

Farmworkers and their families received medications dispensed by UF pharmacy students who worked to find the most effective, lowest-cost drugs for those with limited incomes. Dr. Erin St. Onge, UF’s assistant dean and campus director, said she hopes the collaboration will be a model for others.

“Receiving this award in its inaugural year makes the honor feel extra special,” she said. “We are excited to share our experiences with others so that this concept may be duplicated elsewhere as there are so many patients who don’t receive adequate health care in the U.S. for various reasons.”

UCF project members will be recognized June 7 at the headquarters of the Association of American Medical Colleges in Washington, DC.

To see a video story on the farmworkers clinic, please visit:

Phlebotomy work is largely done by nurses in the clinical setting, so the senior nursing students have hundreds of hours of practice drawing blood on real patients and models. That experience is what  motivated the Internal Medicine Interest Group and second-year medical student  Errol Inci to reach out to the nursing students for help.  “It’s a great opportunity to bring the nurses down here and have them teach us a skill that we, as physicians, will rely on every single day,” Errol said. “This is a routine, daily procedure that’s done, so any practice we can get, we want to take part in it.”

Senior nursing student, Geraldine Martinez was excited about the possibility of interprofessional teaching and learning.  “When I got the invitation from Errol, I felt very privileged and very honored that our future physicians want to learn from their future nurses,” she said. She and four other senior nursing students spent the afternoon teaching first- and second-year M.D.  students how to draw blood on some very useful and life-like arm models. The models allow students to train on an anatomically-correct arm, and even draw blood-like fluid from the model’s veins. Students are able to go through the trial-and-error process of phlebotomy, without actually poking and prodding a real person’s arm.

The Internal Medicine Interest Group advisers, Drs. Abdo Asmar and Sergio Salazar, helped supervise the  interdisciplinary workshop. Both physicians practice at UCF Pegasus Health, the College of Medicine physician practice. “This is something they can expect to be doing when they graduate: working with other professionals to provide the best patient care,” Dr. Asmar said. “Although the nurses and assistants draw blood most of the time, the doctors can be called on when nobody else can do it.  I think it’s important for physicians to know the technique and be good at it.”

The World Health Organization advocates interprofessional education as a way to improve healthcare for all. The organization defines interprofessional education as an event where two or more professions learn about, from and with each other to enable effective collaboration and  improve health outcomes.

The M.D. students will soon find themselves in clerkships where they will work side-by-side with nurses to assist patients. Geraldine said  the opportunity to work together as healthcare students provides benefits to both sides. “The relationship can start now,” she added. “It doesn’t have to be at bedside once we have graduated. Why not start it from the beginning and grow together?”

To watch a video version of this story, please visit

Phlebotomy work is largely done by nurses in the clinical setting, so the senior nursing students have hundreds of hours of practice drawing blood on real patients and models. That experience is what  motivated the Internal Medicine Interest Group and second-year medical student  Errol Inci to reach out to the nursing students for help. “It’s a great opportunity to bring the nurses down here and have them teach us a skill that we, as physicians, will rely on every single day,” Errol said. “This is a routine, daily procedure that’s done, so any practice we can get, we want to take part in it.”

Senior nursing student, Geraldine Martinez was excited about the possibility of interprofessional teaching and learning.  “When I got the invitation from Errol, I felt very privileged and very honored that our future physicians want to learn from their future nurses,” she said. She and four other senior nursing students spent the afternoon teaching first- and second-year M.D.  students how to draw blood on some very useful and life-like arm models. The models allow students to train on an anatomically-correct arm, and even draw blood-like fluid from the model’s veins. Students are able to go through the trial-and-error process of phlebotomy, without actually poking and prodding a real person’s arm.

The Internal Medicine Interest Group’s advisers, Drs. Abdo Asmar and Sergio Salazar, helped supervise the  interdisciplinary workshop. Both physicians practice at UCF Pegasus Health, the College of Medicine physician practice. “This is something they can expect to be doing when they graduate: working with other professionals to provide the best patient care,” Dr. Asmar said. “Although the nurses and assistants draw blood most of the time, the doctors can be called on when nobody else can do it. I think it’s important for physicians to know the technique and be good at it.”

The World Health Organization advocates interprofessional education as a way to improve healthcare for all. The organization defines interprofessional education as an event where two or more professions learn about, from and with each other to enable effective collaboration and  improve health outcomes.

The M.D. students will soon find themselves in clerkships where they will work side-by-side with nurses to assist patients. Geraldine said  the opportunity to work together as healthcare students provides benefits to both sides. “The relationship can start now,” she added. “It doesn’t have to be at bedside once we have graduated. Why not start it from the beginning and grow together?”