https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191003114015.htm

Interprofessional education (IPE) aims to foster learning and collaboration among healthcare students from different professions, with a goal of enhancing patient care. Scheduling face-to-face learning between students in different programs, however, is one of the largest barriers to implementing this type of learning. The study evaluated a virtual educational environment for its ability to provide IPE in palliative care, which is interdisciplinary by nature.

"IPE is an incredibly valuable experience for health professions students to have, and collaborative team-based palliative care has been shown to have a real impact on improving quality of life and patient care while lowering healthcare costs," said first and corresponding author Amy L. Lee, an assistant professor of family medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. "Interprofessional learning is a crucial component for health professions training, but it's often easier said than done. Challenges aligning students' schedules to physically meet and work together are the most-commonly cited obstacle. Communication in real-time via a virtual setting might help address this problem."