Attitudes and perceptions from nursing and medical students towards the other profession in relation to wound care

Abstract

Lack of nurse‒physician collaboration in wound care may result in prolonged healing times for patients. In order to facilitate future professional collaboration, undergraduate learning activities in interprofessional education (IPE) have been proposed. The aim of this study was to investigate nursing and medical students' attitudes and perceptions towards each other's future professions and interprofessional collaboration in wound care. Nursing and medical students took part in an interprofessional learning activity about wound care. Data were collected using the Jefferson Scale of Attitudes towards Physician‒Nurse Collaboration questionnaire to student groups before and after an IPE activity (pooled n = 221). Focus groups were conducted to deepen the knowledge about students' attitudes and perceptions. The results showed high scores on the attitude scale (mean 53.2, possible maximum = 60) both before and after IPE, indicating positive attitudes towards nurse‒physician collaboration. Nursing students scored higher than medical students both pre-IPE (p < 0.001) and post-IPE (p = 0.006). However, no difference on scale scores could be identified between pre- and post-IPE. The following themes emerged in the analysis of focus group discussions: "Approaching patient care from different perspectives," "Need for collaboration and clear professional roles in practice," "Structures hindering future collaboration," and "IPE as a tool for professional practice and roles." The shared learning activity provided insights into the other profession's competence. This kind of learning activity may increase future interprofessional collaboration, and thus, improve wound care.

Characteristics of two questionnaires used to assess interprofessional learning: psychometrics and expert panel evaluations

“…The JSAPNC was introduced in 2013 in order to assess interprofessional learning in a single IPL activity for 2nd year nursing and 3rd year medical students. The JSAPNC was chosen in this setting because of its international widespread use and psychometric merit [ 29 ], but had not previously been utilized in this setting. The RIPLS had been previously used in this school in conjunction with the student-led interprofessional ward.…”

Attitudes towards Interprofessional education in the medical curriculum: a systematic review of the literature

“…The literature search retrieved 3995 articles. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria and removing duplicates, 23 articles were included in the review [10,[29][30][31][32][33][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52] (see PRISMA Flow diagram, Fig. 1).…”

“…The median number of MS in the IPE interventions was 100 . Nine studies (39%) reported data for first-year medical students [10,[29][30][31][36][37][38][39][40], five (22%) for second-year students [41][42][43][44][45], six (26%) for third-year students [32,[46][47][48][49][50], two (9%) for fourth-year [33,51] and one for sixth-year medical students [52]. No study reported interventions occurring in the fifth year.…”

“…Attitudes to Health Professionals Questionnaire (AHPQ) [36] Common Ground Instrument (CGI) [36] Scale of Attitudes toward Physician-Pharmacist Collaboration (SATP2C) [38,40,44] Sociocultural Attitudes in Medicine Inventory (SAMI) [30] Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSE) [39,40] Jefferson Scale of Attitudes toward Physician-Nurse Collaboration (JSAPNC) [39,48,49] ] showed a significant increase in positive attitudes towards IP after the interventions. Nine studies (39%) showed no significant changes in medical students' attitudes towards IPE [30,31,40,42,44,[46][47][48]50], while one demonstrated an increase in negative attitudes towards IPE after the intervention [10]. In years 1 and 2 IPE interventions appear longer in duration.…”

Hva er en sårdiagnose, og hvorfor trenger vi den?

“…Legene anser seg som ansvarlige for å stille en slik sårdiagnose, men synes arbeidet er tidkrevende og komplisert. Dessuten opplever de at utdannelsen ikke godt nok forbereder dem på denne oppgaven (11,12). Utfordringen blir da å finne måter å stille sårdiagnose på, slik at vi sikrer at de som daglig behandler sårene, har den informasjonen og kompetansen de trenger for å gjøre denne jobben på en akseptabel måte.…”