As healthcare becomes increasingly team-based, interprofessional education is recognized as an important part of health professions training. A new study published in Academic Medicine highlights how the University of Minnesota's Interprofessional Internship Program prepares students for collaborative, team-based healthcare while helping community organizations address health priorities across Minnesota.
Authored by Sara North, PT, DPT, PhD, MEd , Cheri Friedrich, DNP, CPNP-PC, Marie McNamara, and Carolyn Porta, PhD, MPH, RN, the study found:
- Community-based interprofessional education prepares students for collaborative practice. Students reported increased confidence in communication, collaborative leadership and understanding the roles of other health professionals after working on interdisciplinary community projects.
- Academic-community partnerships benefit both students and organizations. Community partners reported increased capacity to advance local health initiatives while students gained hands-on experience applying classroom learning to real-world challenges.
- The internship demonstrates a successful model for community-based interprofessional education. The findings suggest that paid, longitudinal, interdisciplinary internships can strengthen workforce preparation while creating meaningful benefits for community organizations.
The authors note that challenges in creating meaningful community-integrated interprofessional opportunities include competing academic schedules, limited faculty capacity, geographic separation and financial constraints, making sustained collaboration across disciplines difficult. Led by the University's Center for Interprofessional Health and the Office of Academic Clinical Affairs, the internship was designed to address those challenges by embedding students from multiple health professions in paid, community-based projects where they learn alongside peers from other disciplines at 5 hours time each week.
Student teams partner with community organizations on projects focused on quality improvement, community engagement and organizational change, including community health needs assessments, overdose prevention initiatives, rural health policy development and organizational improvement efforts.
Unlike traditional semester-long placements, the internship places interdisciplinary teams with a single community partner for an academic year, allowing students to develop sustained working relationships while contributing to long-term projects.
Over its first five years, the internship supported 69 students from 24 academic programs working with 19 community organizations on 36 projects. To evaluate whether the model could strengthen interprofessional education, researchers examined the program's implementation and outcomes using student surveys, peer assessments, community partner evaluations and project data.
Peer assessments corroborated the reported gains in interprofessional competencies, while qualitative feedback highlighted growth in leadership, navigating ambiguity and adapting to team challenges. Together, the findings provide evidence that a paid, community-based, longitudinal internship model can help overcome barriers to traditional interprofessional education while preparing students for collaborative health care.
The authors shared that the internship "fosters a culture of mutual respect and systems thinking, preparing graduates to lead collaborative solutions in healthcare."
As health care systems increasingly rely on interdisciplinary teams, the authors say educational models that prepare students to collaborate effectively are increasingly important. They argue that community-based internships can help bridge the gap between classroom learning and real-world practice while addressing longstanding challenges in interprofessional education.