The results of this study can be helpful to nurse administrators who are responsible for developing highly collaborative healthcare teams and for nurse educators who are focused on developing professional values in future nurses.

An interprofessional leadership course for medical, nursing, and physician assistant students was the setting for teaching communication, self-reflection, and team skills. Students completed the Self-Efficacy for Interprofessional Experiential Learning (SEIEL) Scale, the Team Skills Scale Adjusted, and a survey assessing knowledge of healthcare professions, to evaluate changes in student's knowledge, confidence, and skills in interprofessional learning. Overall students rated their knowledge of role and scope of practice for health professions as significantly higher at the end of the course. This was also true of each of the individual profession groups. There was also a significant increase in overall students' confidence in their ability to carry out the student role in interprofessional learning and in self perceived team skills. However, when individual professions were analyzed separately, the nursing student group was the only group to show significant differences. The Core Competencies for InterprofessionalCollaborative Practice, recommended by the Interprofessional Education Collaborative, address interprofessional leadership knowledge and skills that are critical to safe, high quality patient care. These core competencies speak collectively to our challenge to produce graduates with leadership skills for "collaborative practice readiness." 1,2 Reports from the Institute of Medicine, American Hospital Association, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the World Health Organization (WHO), make building a safer healthcare system a global challenge. 2-6 WHO asks that leaders in health and education work together to implement innovative ways of delivering interprofessional education for "collaborative practice readiness." 2 A core competency of collaboration is effective communication, as poor communication patterns have the potential to break down the relationships that are so critical in teams and can result in medical errors. The ability to establish relationships is essential to learning to work together and effective communication enhances and sustains these relationships. Gittell stresses the importance of relationships in collaboration and defines relational coordination (RC) as "coordinating work through relationships of shared goals, shared knowledge and mutual respect." 7 Jefferson College of Health Sciences (JCHS) and the new Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine (VTCSOM) seized the opportunity to create an environment where health professions students could not only learn with, from, and about each other but could also establish relationships that allowed for learning about the significance of communication skills. Learning communication concepts and skills during their educational process serves as the foundation and preparation to promote collaboration in the workplace.JCHS had established interprofessional education (IPE) as a quality enhancement project and VTCSOM had embodied interprofessionalism as one of four foundational domains in their curriculum. This partnership resulted i...

A 24-hour reality orientation programme was initiated in a long-stay geriatric ward. Nursing and occupational therapy routines were changed specifically to meet the needs of the 20 patients participating in the programme. The assessments included the Clifton Assessment Procedures for the Elderly, the Holden Communication Scale, the Holden Orientation Facilities Scale, and the Oberleder Scale (adapted by Holden et al.). These scales were administered before, during and after completion of a study lasting 4 months. The CAPE scales showed no significant results. However, the Holden Communication Scale indicated that there were significant differences for certain groups of patients. Those patients with high scores initially tended to continue to have high scores and showed no real change. However, patients who had scores in the medium range initially, showed improvement. This finding indicated that severity at onset of the experiment was an important variable when considering outcome of treatment. Expectations regarding the future of the very elderly must be realistic, and to anticipate a return to previous vitality and total independence should not be expected. However, to find a means by which functional levels can be maintained, and even slightly improved, is desirable. It would seem that the 24-hour reality orientation programme achieved this goal.