Temple students from nine different healthcare professions participated in an Interprofessional Education Workshop (IPE) on Friday, October 24, 2025, focused on developing connections across medical fields. This event is one of four hosted every year by the IPE Committee on Temple’s Health Sciences Center.

Six hundred and sixty students came together from pharmacy, medicine, nursing, physical therapy, podiatry, dentistry, physician assistant, and nutrition programs and worked in cross-professional teams to discuss the perceptions and misconceptions of their career pathways. The teams also worked together to dispel professional hierarchies in a safe and open learning environment and discuss similarities and differences between healthcare professionals’ roles and scopes of practice.

“When bringing students from different healthcare professions together, there is an opportunity to listen, learn, and challenge stereotypes while breaking down barriers,” said Melissa Rotz, Clinical Associate Professor and the Director of Interprofessional Education at the Temple University School of Pharmacy. “This IPE workshop isn’t just about understanding roles, it’s about seeing one another as partners with a shared purpose of providing patients with the best care.”

The first IPE workshop was held at Temple in 2013, with associate deans meeting informally. In 2015, the IPE Committee was formalized and began monthly meetings to plan two IPE workshops for the year, later evolving into the quarterly IPE Workshops held today.

At Temple, hosting these educational workshops inclusive to all healthcare students inspires interprofessional and collaborative thinking and combats the negativity and stigma placed on healthcare workers. Participating students have the opportunity to apply learnings from the workshop immediately to real-world conversations and training.