Inter-Professional Education Program for the Assessment of Complex Neurological Cases

With the many looming changes in healthcare combined with patient needs growing in complexity, URI is attempting to prepare its students for a world increasingly reliant on interdisciplinary team decision-making. The HBC Lab is collaborating with faculty from physical therapy, nutrition, nursing, social work, and other disciplines to create an interprofessional education (IPE) experience in which students assess patients with complex neurological problems as part of a simulated healthcare team. The program consists of four 2-hour sessions for students to receive introductory information about IPE, assess patient volunteers, create a treatment plan, and present recommendations for treatment to peers.

The HBC Lab’s primary role in this program is to evaluate participant attitudes, skills, and preparedness towards working in healthcare teams. We are applying constructs from the transtheoretical model of behavior change to study readiness for team-based care, which will inform future measure development efforts.

Your Path to Transplant (YPT)

Your Path to Transplant (YPT) is an intervention targeted to enhance decision-making for pursuing living donor kidney transplant (LDKT) in adults with end-stage renal disease.  Guided by the Transtheoretical Model (TTM) of behavior change, this intervention delivered individualized expert-system feedback on patients’ readiness for pursuing kidney transplant in addition to usual-care transplant education.  Trained coaches conducted telephonic surveys and delivered feedback over four time-points, with treatment fidelity scored using standardized rubrics.  Dr. Robbins was responsible for overseeing treatment fidelity and training the coaches in TTM principles, as well as previous involvement in TTM measure development for the decision-making scales used in this study.  YPT is a collaboration with Amy Waterman, Ph.D., and colleagues at UCLA.

Stuttering Management

The Stuttering Management project is a collaboration with researchers from the University of Iowa. The project focuses on applying the Transtheoretical Model of behavior change to stuttering management among adolescents.

Advance Care Planning

Funded through the National Institute of Aging, this project is a collaboration with researchers from Yale University. The project aims to promote behavior change to increase engagement in advance care planning.