Abstract:

Objective:
To investigate the learning outcomes and impact of inter-professional (IP) service-learning program for pre licensure health professionals, social workers, and nutritionists through implementing collaborative service-learning project about empowering health literacy in the community.

Methods:
We implemented an IP service-learning community outreach project from March to August 2019 in Hong Kong. A total of 197 students from Faculty of Medicine, Food and Nutritional Sciences, and Department of Social Work in The Chinese University of Hong Kong were involved. Inter-professional training workshops were organized to enhance the students’ collaborative and service skills. Teachers from each discipline also prepared e-learning materials to echo the project objective.

We organized 69 service sessions and reached out to 2596 elderly subjects in the community. Students were assigned to collaborate and carry out duties such as hosting workshops about medication safety, cardiovascular diseases, healthy diet, public health services for elderly, and awareness of fake health news circulation. In addition, the students also provided one station health literacy and body check-up assessment outreach service (“outreach) with health professionals in the community.

Results:
We conducted pre and post project learning outcome evaluation among the students, and we found significant improvements among the students’ understanding on following areas : geriatric care (+17.2%, p<0.05); health knowledge (+28%, p<0.05); understanding patients’ needs (+9.8%, p<0.05); change on attitude toward interprofessional education (+67%, p<0.05).

87% of the students (n=106) responded in the post project evaluation that the project was helpful in improving their understanding and attitude toward IP collaboration. Meanwhile, 92% of them were satisfied with this project and they were willing to recommend this project to their peers.
On the other hand, we also conducted baseline feedback survey with outreach service subjects (n=758). 88% of them replied that the health literacy assessment were helpful to assist them to reflect their understanding toward health issues. Up to 94% of them responded that they understand the health information provided by students, and 99% of them were satisfied with the project.

We conducted the 35 questions health literacy assessment with subjects who participated in the one station outreach services (without health education intervention, n=1588), and health workshops participant (with health education intervention, n=76). The mean score of subjects without intervention was 21.8 while it was 26.3 of subjects with intervention.

Conclusion:
We have demonstrated that the IP service learning activities are essential in providing practical IP collaboration. They are helpful to improve students’ knowledge transfer, presentation, and communication skills. Furthermore, it is believed that the students led workshops were helpful and substantial to empower elderly patients’ health literacy. All in all, the project is impactful to the development of high quality patient care in the long run.

Keywords:

Inter-professional Education, Health Literacy, service-learning, community outreach.