Peer facilitators in interprofessional education: a promising response to facilitation challenges

Interprofessional education is an effective and well-recognized strategy to teach healthcare students to work together toward common goals. Still, course implementation faces challenges, as it requires a high demand for human resources to facilitate. While peer teaching is well described in the field of medical education, only a few studies have explored the role of student facilitators in interprofessional education facilitation. This study explored the impact of peer versus faculty facilitators on changes in students’ attitudes toward collaborative learning and interprofessional relationships following participation in an interprofessional education program. The authors conducted a pre-post study using a French translation of two subscales from the validated questionnaire “University of West of England Interprofessional Questionnaire” to measure students’ attitudes towards interprofessional relationships and interprofessional learning before and after the course. In March 2023 and March 2024, 256 and 198 students, respectively, from five professions, completed two subscales of the questionnaire before and after the course, with a response rate of 34.1% and 29.2%. Across both 2023 and 2024, no significant differences were observed between facilitator groups (peer versus faculty facilitators) at either the pre-test or post-test. In 2023, after the course, students demonstrated a significant improvement in their attitudes towards interprofessional relationships, regardless of facilitator type. This improvement was also statistically significant within specific subgroups: students guided by (1) a faculty facilitator, (2) a combination of a professional and a peer facilitator, and (3) peer facilitators. In 2024, changes in students’ attitudes toward IP relationships were not significant for all students, regardless of the type of facilitator. The results were not significant for the interprofessional learning scale in either 2023 or 2024, for all students as well as within subgroups of facilitators. These findings suggest that peer facilitators can be effective as faculty facilitators in supporting interprofessional education. This study supports the engagement of peer facilitators in the context of interprofessional education to address implementation challenges and promote facilitation sustainability.