Redesigning Instruction for Inter-Professional Education

Purpose: A pilot project created a curriculum model infusing Interprofessional Education (IPE) in Mercy College’s School of Health and Natural Sciences (SHNS), allowing students and faculty to integrate IPE within programmatic courses. Background: As institutions focus on patient safety, quality and cost effective care, the call for interprofessional collaboration among providers continues to rise (Chen, Delnat & Gardner, 2015). This program included innovative teaching strategies and curriculum development in the health care programs within the SHNS. Description of Program: Pilot projects focused on history taking and IPE patient case scenarios, allowing students to experience interactive hands on learning of IPE concepts and competencies. Two workshops were held to educate the faculty in developing IPE cases and debriefing strategies. The first program used real patients with chronic conditions allowing students to gain confidence in interviewing while understanding the commonalities between disciplines. This project included students from communication disorders, nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy and physician assistant programs. Participants completed an adapted version of the Attitudes Towards Health Care Teams Scale (ATHCTS) (Kim & Ko, 2014) before and after each pilot program, and a one minute reflection after each program. Findings identified significant changes in five variables on the adapted ATHCTS. The qualitative one minute reflection identified themes of commonalities between disciplines. All students identified a need to provide more IPE education among all of the disciplines. This project demonstrated a new way to use strategies to engage patients as partners in developing new models of IPE and care. This project also addressed approaches to prepare and engage both students and faculty in the IPE process. IPE activities will be broadened in the upcoming years and continue to include patients in the IPE education process. Learning Objectives: By the end of this presentation participants will be able to - Identify new modalities of creating IPE initiatives for implementation across disciplines that incorporate patients into the IPE process. - Identify methods of training faculty in creating IPE strategies and debriefing. Reference: Kim, K & Ko, J. (2014). Attitudes toward interprofessional health care teams scale: a confirmatory factor analysis. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 2014; 28(2): 149–154

Modulatory Communication Signal Performance Is Associated with a Distinct Neurogenomic State in Honey Bees

Studies of animal communication systems have revealed that the perception of a salient signal can cause large-scale changes in brain gene expression, but little is known about how communication affects the neurogenomic state of the sender. We explored this issue by studying honey bees that produce a vibratory modulatory signal. We chose this system because it represents an extreme case of animal communication; some bees perform this behavior intensively, effectively acting as communication specialists. We show large differences in patterns of brain gene expression between individuals producing vibratory signal as compared with carefully matched non-senders. Some of the differentially regulated genes have previously been implicated in the performance of other motor activities, including courtship behavior in Drosophila melanogaster and Parkinson's Disease in humans. Our results demonstrate for the first time a neurogenomic brain state associated with sending a communication signal and provide suggestive glimpses of molecular roots for motor control

Is exposure to formaldehyde in air causally associated with leukemia?—A hypothesis-based weight-of-evidence analysis

Recent scientific debate has focused on the potential for inhaled formaldehyde to cause lymphohematopoietic cancers, particularly leukemias, in humans. The concern stems from certain epidemiology studies reporting an association, although particulars of endpoints and dosimetry are inconsistent across studies and several other studies show no such effects. Animal studies generally report neither hematotoxicity nor leukemia associated with formaldehyde inhalation, and hematotoxicity studies in humans are inconsistent. Formaldehyde's reactivity has been thought to preclude systemic exposure following inhalation, and its apparent inability to reach and affect the target tissues attacked by known leukemogens has, heretofore, led to skepticism regarding its potential to cause human lymphohematopoietic cancers. Recently, however, potential modes of action for formaldehyde leukemogenesis have been hypothesized, and it has been suggested that formaldehyde be identified as a known human leukemogen. In this article, we apply our hypothesis-based weight-of-evidence (HBWoE) approach to evaluate the large body of evidence regarding formaldehyde and leukemogenesis, attending to how human, animal, and mode-of-action results inform one another. We trace the logic of inference within and across all studies, and articulate how one could account for the suite of available observations under the various proposed hypotheses. Upon comparison of alternative proposals regarding what causal processes may have led to the array of observations as we see them, we conclude that the case fora causal association is weak and strains biological plausibility. Instead, apparent association between formaldehyde inhalation and leukemia in some human studies is better interpreted as due to chance or confounding