I-TEAM By Design(TM)

Care work focused on young children, the elderly, and people with disabilities is lacking legitimation.  That is, although we all can agree that these domains of the Care Economy are essential and invaluable to the functioning of our national workforce, care workers in these arenas are often underpaid, lack stable and consistent employment, and are often seen as “less-than” compared to other health and social care professions.  It is therefore essential to raise the perceived legitimacy of care work in order to set the stage for advancing fair and appropriate wages, benefits, and safe, secure employment for these workers.  In turn, the attributes and qualities associated with care work in general needs legitimation as well.  Qualities such as empathy, humility, emotional connectedness, and self- and other-awareness have long been referred to as “soft skills” when in reality there is nothing “soft” about their positive impact through effective communication, shared experience, enhanced well-being, and positive health outcomes. In turn, given this secondary categorization, the building of these skills are often seen as not-as-important as more “clinical” skills, and care workers and students are not provided explicit opportunities to practice these skills and strategies.  Yet research consistently shows that, not only are empathy and humble care workers more satisfied with their work, less likely to experience burnout, and are more likely to stay within their care-related occupation, but in the current value-based care model, care workers that are perceived by patients as being more empathic, humble, and humanistic in general are found to be better for the care industry’s bottom-line.  Put simply, we need more empathic, humble, and compassionate care workers, and these workers need to feel as though their work is seen as legitimate and respected within the Care Economy.

Care workers and health and social care students are often told “Be more empathic.” and “Be more of a team player.” – but what do these even mean? Well, I-TEAM By DesignTM (the Interprofessional Training in Empathy, Affect, (Humility), and Mindfulness) spells it out for learners in ways that relate to their professional development as well as them as a person, because they are more than their professional role.  And that is a KEY approach to I-TEAM By DesignTM -  to level the playing field among health and social care workers, to dismantle the occupational status hierarchy by challenging learners to engage with attributes, practices, and qualities that every care worker can improve upon.  Therefore, not only does I-TEAM By DesignTM educate and train learners in the science and evidence-based practices of enhancing interpersonal and interprofessional qualities, but also purposefully and intentionally breaks down barriers between and among care workers.

We do this by first dissecting the concepts and debates surrounding such hot topics as empathy, humility, emotions, mindfulness, and then outlining how and why these attributes and practices are ‘good’ for patient-centered, and team-based care delivery, as well as their own personal well-being.  The essentiality and value of these skills is consistently highlighted through care scenarios threaded throughout the course. Moreover, learners have the opportunity to develop these skills and strategies through gamified knowledge checks and actual interactive "workouts" in the I-TEAM gym. In short, through I-TEAM By DesignTM, we spotlight and continually emphasize the legitimacy of care-based skills like empathy, humility, emotional attunement and self-/other-awareness and showcase the utility and value of each worker on the care team.

I-TEAM By Design™ is a fully accredited online course focusing on expanding interpersonal and communication skills to promote emotional attunement, connectivity, and effectiveness as a care worker and within care teams. What we mean by “fully accredited” is that upon course completion, learners are eligible for 8 continuing education (CE) credits in various health and social care professions, including:

1. AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™ – CME: 8 credit hours for course completion.
2. Nursing Continuing Professional Development – NCPD: 8 credit hours for course completion.
3. Continuing Pharmacy Credit – CPE: 8 credit hours for course completion. Universal Activity Numbers (UAN) for activity 0122-21 only: Pharmacist:  JA4008217-0000-21-007-H04-P                             
4. Psychology – APA: 8 credit hours for course completion.
5. Social Work – ACE: 8 credit hours for course completion.
6. Interprofessional Continuing Education – IPCE: 8 credit hours for course completion

Moreover, Learners who successfully complete the course will earn a digital credential in I-TEAM By Design™: Interprofessional Training in Empathy, Affect and Mindfulness. Personalized Certificates of Completion are also awarded for successful completion of the course, formalizing a learner’s efforts and providing documentation that can be submitted to instructors or employers.

This accreditation, blockchain-based digital badging, and personal certification are additional features of legitimation I-TEAM By DesignTM provides towards not only the training and learning of empathy, humility, emotionality, and mindfulness, but also for the care workers who complete the course.  Not only are continuing education credits essential for the perpetuation of care workers’ professional licensure, but digital badging and certification showcases care workers acquired competencies and upskilling to vast audiences including colleagues as well as current and future employers.

I-TEAM By DesignTM is beneficial for professionals and students in all clinical, behavioral and social care fields.  Learners are actively engaged in evidence-based, rich content through animated modules. After being introduced to key research, scholars and concepts, learners practice strategies in hands-on “workouts” and then test what they’ve learned through gamified knowledge checks. The program includes both individual and team-based workouts to engage and practice skills with the entire team. The course can be taken individually or incorporated into workforce trainings, classroom curricula, or teaching in clinical rounds. I-TEAM By DesignTM showcases the essentiality of these care-based skills and each and every member of the care team.  Moreover, through the I-TEAM By DesignTM course, learners have the opportunity to build and strengthen their empathy and humility muscles – which are invaluable to their professional and personal lives.

The Center for Advancing Interprofessional Practice Education and Research (CAIPER) is the premiere research and entrepreneurial hub for developing evidence-based online trainings in skills and practices related to patient-centered, team-based collaborative care delivery.  I-TEAM By DesignTM is one of five eLearning programs built and administered through CAIPER – each with a large and consistent audience.  CAIPER is well respected within the field of interprofessional education and practice including various health and social care professional groups.   In short, we are connected to the communities we serve through our outreach, research portfolio, and catalog of eLearning programing.

Furthermore, as part of our accreditation process, we were required to identity and gather an interdisciplinary Review Committee that consisted of members of the community we intended to reach with the program – care workers within the fields Medicine, Nursing, Social Work, Psychiatry, Nutrition & Dietetics, Pharmacy, Physician Assistant, as well as students in the care fields.  This committee not only unanimously approved of I-TEAM By DesignTM but also boisterously sang its praises, highlighting the high level of energy and engagement the program provides, its unique and novel approach, its robust trainings, translation of the science and research associated with the topics, and the deep need for training on these topics among care providers.    

As an entity of Arizona State University (ASU), CAIPER is nested within the academic realm, and although ASU is consistently ranked #1 in Innovation, and prides itself in advancing and extending the enterprise and entrepreneurial arm of academia to broader audiences, we are still limited and somewhat behind in regards to industry standards of practice for the eLearning market.  Similarly, given the novelty of our approach, CAIPER in fact pushes University-level entities in their design, marketing, and technology through our development and administration of our products – we are the trend setters, we are leading the field, and we are pushing the boundaries of our University in this arena.  We see ourselves as the next generation of what a “Center” can be and do within a University setting.  In order to realize this potential, we need to move beyond our academe borders and boundaries and partner with those groups and entities that have already achieved this essential transformation.  MIT Solve is a perfect example of who/what CAIPER wants to partner with and learn from to take this next step.  We are of course interested in the grant-related opportunities to advance the design and marketing of the next wave of I-TEAM By DesignTM (and expand the audience for the program), but we are most interested in learning from and working with professionals who understand this “new world” of enhancing social entrepreneurship and bridging domains of industry and academia.

There are other empathy-oriented “training programs” for healthcare workers on the market, yet these programs promote a superficial and surface-level approach to the empathy experience – rooting it in little more than a checklist – and focusing on one care profession (typically Medicine).  What makes I-TEAM By DesignTM different, is that we have designed our program for all care occupations and focus on and celebrate the human-ness of empathy, and its primary emotional ingredient – emotional contagion (or the “sharing” of emotional states).  Moreover, we connect the dots regarding other essential care-based skills, such as the ability and willingness to assess and understand others’ emotional states, cultivating respect and value for patients, their families, and colleagues as knowledgeable partners of the care team, and focusing on being here now with clients, patients, and each other.  Moreover, we nest all of this in the notion of (inter)professional and personal development.  We consistently highlight how these skills, strategies, and attributes are essential to care delivery – but also to day-to-day interpersonal connectivity and communication.  I-TEAM By DesignTM, is meant to cultivate “better” care workers, but also promote humanism in general.  We believe our learners will not only serve as agents of cultural positive change within their organizations, but with friends and family as well.  No other program or initiative of this nature attends to the human-ness of care workers like I-TEAM By DesignTM, and we do so purposely and intentionally.

We do not intend to measure the multitude of processes and mechanisms of legitimation of an occupation and/or of particular skills and attributes (i.e. empathy and humility).  But what we have done with I-TEAM By DesignTM by achieving accreditation, as well as securing digital badging and certification, is that we have ensured that the program and what it provides learners, is recognized as a care-based competency, as an accredited learning program to maintain licensure, and vehicle for professional development. In turn, we have infiltrated the system and utilized its own legitimation techniques and processes to in fact, legitimate not only empathy, humility, and emotional connectivity, but also the learners that engage in I-TEAM By DesignTM.

Moreover, our focus is not only on “impact” but also on reach.  Over the last year, we have delivered talks and presentations to various care-based organizations within the US and abroad with the goal of expanding the potential audience. In turn, and given that skills and attributes like empathy, compassion, humility, and emotional connectivity span cultures and national identities, our goal within five years is to see I-TEAM By Design adopted by learners across the globe. 

 In terms of specific, measurable indicators of impact and reach, our goals include:

• 1000-2000 individual learners by end of Year 1 (April 2023); 7500-10,000 individual learners by end of year 5 (April 2028)
  • With at least 50% of those learners pursuing/earning CE credits
• Capture Net Promoter Score (NPS) in year 1; NPS score of >0 by end of Year 5
• 10-15 care-based organizations (e.g. hospitals, health profession education schools, Doctors without Boards, AACN, etc.)  adopting/offering (even requiring) program for their workforce by end of Year 1; 50-100 care-based organizations adopting program by end of Year 5
• Program Learners from 2-3 different countries (including US) by end of Year 1; Program Learners from 10-15 different countries by end of Year 5

• Learning Outcomes Survey: includes direct measure of I-TEAM By DesignTM learning outcomes
• Specific metrics to track Learners’ occupation, location, and CE accreditation
• Specific on-boarding inventory metrics for organizations ordering program for large groups/workforce
• Analytics tracking learner’s use and implementation of blockchain-based digital badges

I-TEAM By DesignTM is a fully online program that makes use of various multimedia and eLearning software packages and hosting platforms such as, Articulate for HTML5 interactive video, Canvas Learning Management System for course hosting and to automate issuing of digital credentials, audio/visual and graphic enhancements with leading industry design/production software, animation, gamified learning and evaluation, and Badgr for blockchain-based digital and stackable badges.  One thing that makes our solution unique is our utilization of blockchain-based stackable digital badges to provide verifiable and portable enduring confirmation of skills/learning/knowledge, etc.  Metadata embedded in digital badges and secured through the blockchain verifies who earned the credential, who issued it, and the completion requirements. Although we rely on somewhat “traditional” technology to build and support the program, we are harnessing forward thinking blockchain-based technology to legitimize the material nested within I-TEAM By DesignTM, as well as to legitimize and validate the learners engaging with the program. This is also laying foundation for a stackable program and certification.

Arizona State University is deeply committed to positioning itself as one of the great new universities by seeking to build excellence, enhance access and have an impact on our community, state, nation and the world. To do that requires our faculty and staff to reflect the intellectual, ethnic and cultural diversity of our nation and world so that our students learn from the broadest perspectives, and we engage in the advancement of knowledge with the most inclusive understanding possible of the issues we are addressing through our scholarly activities.   We recognize that race and gender historically have been markers of diversity in institutions of higher education. However, at ASU, we believe that diversity includes additional categories such as socioeconomic background, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, veteran status, nationality and intellectual perspective.

As an entity of ASU, CAIPER purposely and intentionally incorporates these values into our products, our research initiatives, and our strategic partnerships.  This is evident in the character development and works referenced within the I-TEAM By DesignTM program.  Currently, our team consists of five individuals that identify as women, and one individual that identifies as a man – and we range in age, ethnicity, nationality, and realm of expertise. 

The ultimate goal of any “Center” nested within an academic organization is to become self-sustaining financially.  Although this is a remarkably challenging goal, the pursuit is constant and persistent and is conducted through external funding proposals (i.e. Foundation-based and Federal funding opportunities) and the “unicorn” of Center self-sustainability – the “gift” and/or donation made in perpetuity to your Center (and its team members) specifically.   As noted in a previous section of this application, we (CAIPER) see ourselves as the next generation of “Centers” and whereas we indeed actively and relentlessly seek external funding opportunities, we are also focused on building our entrepreneurial arm and advancing our for-profit eLearning products with the goal of become self-sustaining through these particular mechanisms…..and a massive donation from a wealthy donor who is all about empathy and/or humility in care delivery.

Currently, a majority of CAIPER team members’ (5/6) time/effort are supported in part by external funding from the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and/or Dignity Healthcare.  We have 2 additional proposals under review (with Mayo Clinic and Russell Sage Foundation).  Furthermore, I-TEAM By DesignTM is the second for-profit eLearning program, and we have explicit plans to reboot our most popular eLearning program (thus far) that is currently free to a more modernized, animated, and gamified program (much like I-TEAM) that will be for profit.  This reboot begins April 15th, 2022.  Moreover, we have plans to build two more for profit eLearning short course programs in the next 3 years.