An interprofessional pilot elective course on health screening tests and tools: Lessons learned

Background: Ten health disciplines at Idaho State University-Meridian Health Science Center provide free, comprehensive Community Health Screening (CHS) events. One of the primary goals of these events is to increase interprofessional education. This prompted the development of a 2-credit elective course to facilitate interdisciplinary education in a classroom environment, specifically addressing public health issues.  The course goal was to prepare all students for participation in CHS events and other outreach endeavors. This descriptive analysis provides insight about the benefits of providing this course and the areas for potential growth. Methods:  There were three faculty involved with the coordination and implementation of the course. Sixteen students from 4 different health care professions including public health, were enrolled. A pretest and final exam were administered to determine student knowledge base.  The final asked students to provide strengths and weakness of the course (non-punitive).  Results: Forty-seven questions were analyzed for this evaluation from 15 students.  The average score for the pretest was 63.0% and was 81.7% for the final exam.   The most mentioned strengths included; practicing on others/hand on experience (n=11), working through case scenarios (n=5), and working with other health care students (n=4).  The most common complaints included; unknown test and course expectations (n=6) and that the course is not linked to participation in a CHS event (n=4).   Conclusion:  The implementation of this pilot elective course has provided faculty a baseline for future successes with recommendations for improvements in the education of health care students in various public health domains.