Impact of Community-Based Go Baby Go Project on Interprofessional Collaboration

Abstract Interprofessional education and collaborative practice (IPEC) are essential components of healthcare teams in the United States. This study aimed to explore the impact of a community-based Go Baby Go (GBG) project that used assistive technology and environmental adaptation skills to provide interprofessional education and hands-on collaboration between occupational therapy and speech-language pathology graduate students. The interprofessional collaboration (IPC) experiences provided to graduate students were centered on shared lectures and labs on role delineation, evaluation, and treatment focused on modifications through assistive technology and environmental adaptation. The culminating experience included labs with three to four students from each discipline in a team to evaluate and develop a battery-powered rideable toy car modification for a child with a disability. Students completed pre-and post-surveys followed by written reflections about the IPC experience. A paired-samples t-test was used to evaluate changes between pre-and post-survey scores. The mean score for the post-test survey scores demonstrated a statistically significant increase over the mean score for the pre-test. The themes from the qualitative analysis of student reflections included "role of each discipline," "collaboration," and "hands-on, real-life learning," indicating that community-based IPC experiences can be beneficial in promoting team collaboration, understanding role delineation, and professional scope of practice. The GBG project of modifying and fitting the battery-powered toy car can be a fun and impactful way to promote IPC and real-world evaluation and treatment opportunities for student learning.