Background/Aim: Disasters overwhelm healthcare systems by compounding acute disaster-specific needs with chronic condition management and service disruptions. However, the resulting "permeable environment" often flattens traditional hierarchies, necessitating a collaborative, collective-effort mindset. Primary care professionals must adapt their everyday roles to meet these unique demands. This study evaluated the impact of a novel interprofessional elective (IPE), "Health Emergency Preparedness for Primary Care," on health students' knowledge, skills, and attitudes regarding their primary care and disaster-response roles.

Methods: The IPE was piloted in November 2025 for a multidisciplinary cohort of pharmacy, medicine, and nursing students. The curriculum featured a hybrid design: asynchronous online modules followed by an in-person disaster simulation involving standardized patient actors. Post-simulation, students participated in a facilitated debrief and submitted written reflective statements. A thematic analysis of the students debrief reflective statements was performed.

Results: The pilot included 24 students (8 per discipline). Overall, the IPE was received well by the students in all three primary care professions, with calls for more learning opportunities for disaster preparedness and collaboration across disciplines. Thematic analysis revealed that the simulation successfully translated "systems thinking" theory into practice. Notably, medicine and nursing students reported a significantly clearer understanding of the pharmacist’s scope and value as an equal team member. As one medical student noted: “During the SIM and throughout the modules my existing knowledge of how involved pharmacists can be in the community was reinforced and built upon.”

Conclusion: Results from the initial IPE iteration demonstrate its potential to train students for the unique pressures of disaster response while clarifying and advancing their professional roles in primary care. By fostering collaborative practice and clarifying interprofessional roles, this elective equips students to navigate the complex landscape of primary care during emergencies.

The importance of public health (PH) in the education of pharmacists has long been recognized as essential in the preparation of student pharmacists to generate social and physical environments that promote all inclusive health. An investigation into healthcare students’ perceptions about their role, confidence and competence to deliver brief PH interventions and advice also found that there was a sense of insufficient time and appropriateness to deliver health promotion advice and signpost to services in the patient pathway (McLean et al. 2018). Even though prescribing and PH are core component of the pharmacists role within the curriculum they are often treated as distinct areas and there is a risk of graduates lacking competence and confidence in clinical decision making and meaningful engagement in population health initiatives (O’Neill and Rajiah 2025).

The vision of this project is to shape future development of Experiential Learning (EL) for student pharmacists in Northern Ireland and agree an ambitious core PH element which will prepare student pharmacists to generate social and physical environments that promote all-inclusive health within Healthy Living Centres (HLCs) which promote stronger legacies for healthier communities.
Ethical approval granted by UU FCBMS-25-087-B and approval affirmed by QUB faculty rec MHLS . Student pharmacists who would like to undertake one day of EL in HLC were invited to complete an expression of interest (EOI) form detailing each of the HLCs participating in the project. 20 students from each university were allocated to the HLCs. Following the completion of experiential learning and reflection on their entrustable professional activity (EPA ) a focus group discussion (FGD) was conducted to gather feedback from participants.
FGDs revealed both student pharmacists and project co-ordinators from HLC had a positive perception and grasped the gravity of the population health model and the relevance it has for them in supporting people within their communities. The project demonstrates undeniable need and yearning from student pharmacists and HLA to develop EL including a core PH model element within the MPharm as the results illustrate limited knowledge and training around the delivery of brief interventions at an early stage in their profession.

Background
Contemporary healthcare systems require effective coordination among health professionals to deliver high-quality care. In response, pharmacy education embraces collaborative learning as essential to preparing graduates for team-based, patient-centered care. Curricula worldwide increasingly emphasize structured interprofessional education (IPE) developed with defined collaborative competencies from established frameworks. However, findings from a series of qualitative studies exploring pharmacy student experiential learning and primary care pharmacists’ collaborative practices in Canada, suggest a gap between how collaboration is taught on-campus and how it unfolds in everyday patient care.

Methods
We conducted diary and follow-up interview studies with 4th year pharmacy students (N=25) completing experiential learning placements in community and hospital practices, respectively. We subsequently completed social network analysis of community (N=30) and outpatient clinic (N=14) pharmacists exploring their interprofessional care networks. Multi-member research teams conducted reflexive thematic analysis to identify themes in collaborative care.

Results
Students often encounter informal and unstructured collaboration shaped by local relationships and systemic constraints which is far removed from the controlled, protocol-driven activities rehearsed in campus-based IPE curricula. Pharmacists similarly describe collaborator encounters as improvisational, forged through necessity and context, and frequently extending beyond formal interprofessional boundaries to include social care providers, administrative staff, and other non-traditional team members.

Discussion
Together, our findings compel critical reflection on whether current educational approaches sufficiently prepare students for the realities of collaborative work. In privileging structured team-based models, IPE may unintentionally obscure the relational, adaptive, and invisible forms of collaboration essential to primary care practice. Students entering practices physically situated apart from other health professionals or without membership in pre-established teams must enact collaboration across geographic and personnel boundaries. To truly support workforce readiness, interprofessional and pharmacy education programming must broaden instruction and skill development to equip graduates to pro-actively identify potential collaborators, engage with informal and relational teamwork, and navigate communication and collaborative decision-making in more varied care contexts.

Patel H, Perry S, Badu E, et al. A scoping review of interprofessional education in healthcare: evaluating competency development, educational outcomes and challenges. BMC Med Educ. 2025;25(1):409.

Background/Statement of aim(s): Developing future-ready pharmacists who can excel in collaborative, team-based care requires intentional integration of interprofessional competencies throughout the curriculum. As programs expand didactic interprofessional education (IPE), pharmacy educators continue to seek evidence-informed approaches to assessing competency development [1,2]. The purpose of this session is to examine assessment considerations for evaluating interprofessional competency growth within didactic IPE activities involving pharmacy learners alongside multiple health professions.
Methods: A coordinated assessment strategy was implemented across pharmacy and several other health professions programs to evaluate students’ development of IPE competencies through participation in intentional didactic IPE experiences. Assessment strategies included student self-evaluation of their self-efficacy of their IPE competency [1-2] using a retrospective-pre and post-evaluation.
Results: More than 7,500 students across 18 disciplines participated in IPE activities assessed. Pharmacy learners, consistent with peers from other professions, reported increased confidence in several IPE competencies after participating in these didactic curricular activities. These findings suggest the didactic IPE curriculum is supporting measurable growth in IPE competency development.
Discussion and/or Conclusion: As pharmacy education continues to transform its education models for emerging practice needs, scalable strategies to evaluate interprofessional collaborative-practice readiness are essential. Insights from this multi-disciplinary assessment effort highlight key design elements for assessing student growth and practice-readiness. These considerations can help pharmacy programs strengthen alignment between curricular structure, competency expectations, and the evolving demands of collaborative practice [1-2].


1. Interprofessional Education Collaborative. IPEC Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice: Version 3 [internet]. Washington, DC; 2023 [cited 8 January 2026]. Available from: https://www.ipecollaborative.org/assets/core-competencies/IPEC_Core_Competencies_Version_3_2023.pdf
2. National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education. Nexus Resource Exchange Assessment and Evaluation – The Measurement Instrument Collection [internet]. Minneapolis, Minnesota; 2023 [cited 8 January 2026]. Available from: https://nexusipe.org/advancing/assessment-evaluation