The Co-op experience should prepare students to do at least some of the following:

• Choose effective communication tools and techniques, including information systems and communication technologies, to facilitate interactions that enhance team function.
• Listen actively, and encourage other team members to express ideas and opinions.
• Contribute to effective communication, conflict resolution, and positive interprofessional working relationships.
• Recognize one’s own uniqueness, including experience level, expertise, culture, power, and hierarchy within the health care team.
• Engage appropriate health professionals in shared patient-centered problem solving.
• Integrate the knowledge and experience of other appropriate professions to inform care decisions, while also respecting patient and community values, priorities, and preferences for care.
• Perform effectively on teams and in different team roles.
• Conduct preliminary oral health risk assessments tailored to individual patients.
• In collaboration with a licensed health care provider, perform oral health evaluations linking patient history, risk assessment, and clinical findings.
• Provide targeted patient education about the importance of oral health and how to maintain good oral health. Consider the patient’s oral health literacy, nutrition, and perceived oral health barriers.
• Exchange meaningful information among health care providers to identify and implement appropriate high quality care for patients. Base these care decisions on comprehensive evaluations and the options available within the local health delivery and referral system.
• Apply interprofessional practice principles that lead to safe, timely, efficient, effective, and equitable planning and delivery of patient and population-centered oral health care.
• Facilitate patient navigation in the oral health care delivery system by collaborating with oral health care providers and providing appropriate referrals.
• Identify barriers to care for people experiencing challenges such as homelessness, addiction, or poverty.
• Recognize the unique presentation of medical or behavioral health conditions that impact oral health for individuals with challenges such as those stemming from homelessness, addiction, or poverty.
• Collaborate with other health care professionals to design interventions for overcoming barriers to care for people with these or other challenges.

Sources

Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel. (2011). Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice: Report of an expert panel. Washington, D.C.: Interprofessional Education Collaborative.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2014). Integration of Oral Health and Primary Care Practice. Rockville, MD: Health Resources and Services Administration.