Gateway Café is a weekly community support group for those living with traumatic brain injury and stroke offered through URI’s Speech and Hearing Clinic. The program was established by Dr. Leslie Mahler, Associate Professor in the Department of Communicative Disorders (CMD) and Director of the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program. Since its inception, Dr. Mahler has expanded the program to include faculty and students from the Departments of Nutrition and Food Sciences (NFS) and Kinesiology (KIN). The key faculty involve include, associate professors, Doctors Ingrid Lofgren (NFS), and Furong Xu (KIN), and professor, Dr. Matthew Delmonico (KIN).
The support group lasts two hours and is structured to include two cognitive-linguistic activities, a physical activity and a nutrition education component. Students meet a half hour before and after each session to plan, collaborate and debrief.
When Dr. Mahler established the program she had her experiences in outpatient therapy in mind, where she always worked in teams and the patient was at the center of every team. Mahler finds, “If we model that [setting] students learn collaboration, they learn each other’s perspectives; the people being treated benefit from getting input from multiple points of view, from multiple disciplines.”
Through bringing experts from different disciplines, Dr. Mahler hopes to bridge the gap between IPE in the classroom and in practice and hopes when students graduate they will seek collaboration across health disciplines to provide optimal patient-centered care. Lofgren adds, “it is real life, [participants] are true community members. [Gateway] is not a research project, but we are furthering their quality of life.”
Gateway also teaches students the importance of teamwork. Lofgren notes, depending on the activity there is a rotating leadership, both students and faculty across participate in each activity. While each discipline plans a related activity, students across disciplines participate. For instance, during the physical activity portion, all disciplines are spotting and assisting participants to ensure exercise program lead by the kinesiology student is done safely.
Through these experiences, students learn to adapt lessons for different levels of disability as a result of a neurological condition. Dr. Mahler notes that for many students learning to adapt to these wide range of physical and cognitive disabilities can be a “learning curve.” However, there are so many levels of support needed for Gateway and its cousin support group, LOUD for Life, that students can be involved in a variety of degrees. For instance, a freshman student can gain exposure to IPE through helping with planning and finding materials and appropriate snacks. While a junior or senior and graduate student would have a more hands on role. Graduate students also have the opportunity to mentor undergraduate students.
Students are currently required to journal on their experience and write two reflection papers throughout the semester. Dr. Mahler hopes to incorporate case-based learning by assigning students a participant who they will track and journal on their progress in the group. The faculty in this group also hope to expand the debrief portion to help students better handle constructive feedback, address conflict, and work on values and ethics of teamwork.