USER

I began my career in 2001 as a physical therapist and primarily worked with patients who had a neurological injury.  Early in my career it became evident that a patient-centered team approach was needed to achieve optimal patient outcomes.  In 2010 I became an Assistant Professor of Physical Therapy at the University of Central Arkansas (UCA) and immediately realized the need for interprofessional education to better prepare our students to work in a collaborative healthcare environment.  As a new faculty member, I formed a small coalition of like-minded professionals from the UCA nursing, OT, and SLP departments, and we began offering a case based IPE forum for our students.  Since our group’s inception in 2010, we now have an official IPE committee (of which I am the founding chair), the IPE forum has grown to include over 400 participants annually from all health-care related fields at our university, and IPE champions are developing multiple interdepartmental IPE activities across our college.  I am now interested in furthering our IPE efforts through curriculum and instructional design paired with the most valuable assessment and evaluation techniques.