Salus University in Elkins Park and Arcadia University in Glenside recently collaborated for an interprofessional education (IPE) opportunity between Arcadia’s Physical Therapy (PT) program and Salus University’s Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) and Occupational Therapy (OT) programs.
“Salus and Arcadia combine each year for this IPE opportunity to give students an authentic experience of how they are going to work as practitioners after graduation. The event helps provide our students with the proper skills in place to be effective healthcare or education practitioners when they leave for their externship rotations and for when they graduate and enter professional practice,” said Robert Serianni, MS, CCC-SLP, FNAP, Salus University SLP program director and chair.
The program split students from the three programs into approximately 20 groups, with all programs represented in each group. In the groups, students were various patient model examples and discussed treatment methods for the patients involving an interprofessional approach from OTs, PTs, and SLPs. Students worked together to discuss how the different professions could work together towards a common goal of helping the patient recover.
According to Serianni, IPE programs of this nature help improve patient care outcomes, student satisfaction, and allow faculty to bring theories in programmatic practice principles to life through real-world applications.
Allison Fowler, physical therapist and IPE coordinator at Arcadia University said, “it is a wonderful opportunity for both Arcadia and Salus University students to work with different disciplines outside of their field, and outside of the programs at their respective universities. We have opportunities to work with Physician Assistant students and Public Health students at Arcadia, but coming to Salus we are able to work with OT and SLP students who are part of the core of rehab departments and teams.”
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