Interprofessional Education of Pharmacy and Nutrition in a Critical Illness Simulation

Introduction: Critical illness requires coordinated interprofessional care to optimize outcomes. Pharmacists and dietitians are essential members of the intensive care unit (ICU) team, contributing to medication safety and nutrition support. However, health professions students often lack early exposure to interprofessional collaboration. Interprofessional education (IPE), particularly through simulation, can enhance understanding of professional roles and foster collaborative practice. This study evaluated a newly developed multidisciplinary simulation in a pharmacy elective course and assessed its impact on pharmacy and nutrition students’ attitudes toward interprofessional collaboration.


Methods: Second- and third-year pharmacy students enrolled in a critical care elective were paired with second-year nutrition students for a joint surgical ICU simulation. Students were divided into interprofessional teams and presented with a clinical case involving a critically ill surgical patient with enteral feeding intolerance. Pharmacy students completed a six-question quiz before and after the simulation to assess understanding of the dietitian’s role. Both groups completed discipline-specific reflection questions evaluating changes in perception of their own and others’ roles in interprofessional care.


Results: Nineteen pharmacy and eleven nutrition students participated. Among pharmacy students who completed both quizzes (n=14), mean scores improved from 2.7 ± 0.97 to 4.3 ± 0.34 (p < 0.001). Reflection responses revealed three key themes: enhanced self-perception of professional role, improved understanding of the other profession’s contributions, and increased respect for interprofessional collaboration in critical care.


Conclusions: An interprofessional critical care nutrition simulation significantly improved pharmacy students’ understanding of the dietitian’s role and fostered mutual respect and role clarity. Simulation-based IPE may be a valuable strategy to prepare health professions students for collaborative practice in complex clinical settings.