Efforts to improve interprofessional education (IPE) are informed by attitudes of health professional students, yet there are limited US data on student characteristics and experiences associated with positive attitudes towards IPE. A cohort of US medical, nursing, and physician associate students was surveyed in their first and third years, using the Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale and Interdisciplinary Education Perception Scale. Information was also collected on demographics and experiences during training. Health professional students differed in their attitudes towards IPE; characteristics associated with having more positive attitudes at both time points included being a nursing student, female, older, and having more previous healthcare experience. Students who participated in interprofessional extracurricular activities (particularly patient-based activities) during training reported more positive attitudes in the third year than those who did not participate in such activities. Based on these findings, schools may consider how student characteristics and participation in interprofessional extracurricular activities can affect attitudes regarding IPE. Building on the positive elements of this interprofessional extracurricular experience, schools may also want to consider service-learning models of IPE where students work together on shared goals.
Background: Accelerated master’s entry programs for non-nurse college graduates leading to advanced practice, which are both rigorous and fast-paced, utilize academic metrics to evaluate prospective candidates, including GRE scores and GPA levels. Because this program saw an increased rate of failure from the program (with medical-surgical nursing being associated with > 93% of failures), the aim of this study was to examine if either of these metrics were associated with later success in the program.Methods: A retrospective, descriptive study analyzed admission metrics and first year academic performance to determine if any criteria were associated with academic success. Data collected included age, gender, race, ethnicity, GPA, GREs and scores on the seven required courses in the first 25 weeks. T-tests, correlations, ANOVAs and multiple regression were used to determine if any significant relationships existed.Results: Admission data from 333 students revealed no differences in the mean GPA related to academic success. Student who failed out of the program had significantly lower GRE quantitative, verbal, and writing scores. Additionally, quantitative and verbal scores correlated with exam scores on many didactic courses, and explained 25.4% of the variance in the first medical-surgical exam scores (p < .001), with GRE quantitative scores having the most effect.Conclusions: This study demonstrated verbal and quantitative scores were the only predictor of academic success suggesting admission offices should reconsider whether this current trend of omitting GREs is meeting the needs of students, faculty, universities and the public at large.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.