Interprofessional elective teaches skills to counter health misinformation

Open up any social media app and you might come across posts that raise doubts about medications or promote questionable health advice. For many people, this can create confusion and fear when making decisions about their health. The Canadian Medical Association has found that health misinformation has led to more Canadians delaying or avoiding care they need, and feeling uncertain about who to trust. That’s why it’s so important for health professionals to meet people where they are and support informed decision-making in a respectful and inclusive way.

Pharmacists, nurses and other health care professionals inevitably encounter patients who have inaccurate or misinformed beliefs about their health, and they may have to navigate challenging conversations while maintaining trust with these patients. This can be especially common for pharmacists and nurses, who are often the most accessible health care providers and have many opportunities for these conversations.

“Sometimes as health care providers, we can get a bit on our toes when a patient makes a decision based on misinformation, but these patients are more than just the one decision they make that you don’t agree with,” says Jennifer Lake, assistant professor – teaching stream at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy. “Learning to have these difficult conversations while maintaining a good relationship is really important, so that you can keep their trust. Maybe you’ll change their mind, maybe not, but they still deserve your best care.”

Lake recently teamed up with Summer Haddad, assistant professor – teaching stream at the Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, along with Stella Ng from the Centre for Advancing Collaborative Health Care and Education (CACHE), plus Donald Bettencourt and Ellena Andoniou from the Institute for Education Research (TIER) at University Health Network. Together, they developed a two-part elective course through the U of T’s Interprofessional Education (IPE) curriculum to teach students from the U of T’s 11 health profession faculties approaches to addressing mis- and disinformation. Called Meeting People Where They’re At: Relationship-Centered and Evidence-Informed Approaches to Addressing Mis/Disinformation, it was held for the first time in late spring, with 12 students enrolled, with the next offering in November 2025 for up to 30 students.

“Patients will see many different health professionals, and it’s helpful for all of the professions to use the same approach and consistent communication.”

Lake and Haddad had heard from students in their respective faculties that they were encountering misinformation more often in their communities. While health profession faculties may include the topic in their own curriculum, Lake and Haddad also wanted to address it in an interprofessional setting.

“Patients will see many different health professionals, and it’s helpful for all of the professions to use the same approach and consistent communication,” says Haddad. “When health providers collaborate, it strengthens our approach and improves the care we provide to our patients.”

Course emphasizes importance of trust and relationships

Some health professionals and researchers on social media take a ‘mythbusting’ approach to countering misinformation, providing evidence and explaining why the misinformation is wrong, but Lake says this isn’t necessarily the best approach when speaking one-on-one with a vulnerable patient. When designing the elective, she and Haddad wanted to focus on how to engage in difficult conversations while maintaining a trusting relationship with the patient.

The course shared evidence-informed approaches to responding to mis- or disinformation with patients, colleagues and community members. The learners then worked in teams to devise approaches for responding to misinformation through realistic case studies. “It’s important to provide students with realistic opportunities that allow them to simulate a difficult conversation in a safe space,” says Lake. “They need the opportunities to practise this skill before they encounter it for the first time with a vulnerable patient.”

Interprofessional groups allowed students to learn from each other

Chloé Lavoie (2T6) recalls that her first experience working in pharmacy was several years ago, during the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, and she didn’t know how to respond to health misinformation that her patients were sharing. So when she saw the course advertised, she enrolled to learn strategies and approaches that would help her in similar situations in her future pharmacy practice.

During the course, Lavoie worked in a small group with students from medicine, social work, and radiation technology. For their case study, they presented a puppet show that allowed them to creatively role-play different approaches each profession could take in addressing vaccine misinformation with a patient.

“Everyone had a different level of expertise on a topic, and so having an interprofessional group, we could learn from each other and contribute in the area where we were knowledgeable,” she says. “Working on the case study together was a good opportunity for everyone to learn a little bit more about each profession and how we can all work together to educate our patients.”

“Trust, communication and open dialogue are critical to addressing misinformation and disinformation so we can provide the best possible care.”

Lavoie found the course to be a valuable experience, and she says she learned approaches to communicate with empathy and understanding, provide patients with the amount of information that they are ready to hear, and make patients feel heard. For Lake and Haddad, learning to meet patients where they are is a critical part of providing high-quality care.

“If a patient feels unheard by health care professionals, they are going to turn elsewhere for health information,” says Haddad. “Trust, communication and open dialogue are critical to addressing misinformation and disinformation so we can provide the best possible care.”