Long‐term effect of a short interprofessional education interaction between medical and physical therapy students

Abstract

Medicine is increasingly focused on team-based practice as interprofessional cooperation leads to better patient care. Thus, it is necessary to teach teamwork and collaboration with other health care professionals in undergraduate medical education to ensure that trainees entering the workforce are prepared to work in teams. Gross anatomy provides an opportunity to expose students to interprofessional education (IPE) early in their training. The purpose of this study is to describe an IPE experience and report if the experience has lasting influence on the participating students. The Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale (RIPLS) questionnaire was administered to first year medical (MD) and physical therapy (PT) students at Mayo Medical School and Mayo School of Health Sciences. Results demonstrated an openness on the part of the students to IPE. Interprofessional education experiences were incorporated into gross anatomy courses in both medical and PT curricula. The IPE experiences included a social event, peer-teaching, and collaborative clinical problem-solving sessions. These sessions enhanced gross anatomy education by reinforcing previous material and providing the opportunity to work on clinical cases from the perspective of two healthcare disciplines. After course completion, students again completed the RIPLS. Finally, one year after course completion, students were asked to provide feedback on their experience. The post-curricular RIPLS, similar to the pre-curricular RIPLS, illustrated openness to IPE from both MD and PT students. There were however, significant differences in MD and PT perceptions of roles and responsibilities. One-year follow-up indicated long-term retention of lessons learned during IPE.

Getting it Right from the Start: An Interprofessional Orientation Experience for Graduate Health Sciences Students, Evaluating Attitudes toward Role

“…The researchers found that the nursing students had significantly higher scores on the domain of roles and responsibilities attributing this increase to the greater clinical exposure and additional IPE experiences. Likewise, Systma, et al [18] found significant differences in the roles and responsibility domain between medical students and physical therapy students in an anatomy lab with medical students scoring significantly higher that the physical therapy students. A study by Rose, et al [24]with similar disciplines as represented in this study did not show differences amongst the disciplines.…”

“…Unfortunately, many healthcare educational programs lack adequate opportunities and training in IPE [18]. Mellor, Cottrell, and Moran [19] (conducted semi-structured interviews with students following an IPE program offered four times to students in medicine, physical therapy, occupational therapy, pharmacy, and nursing.…”

A Systematic Meta‐Analysis of the Effect of Interprofessional Education on Health Professions Students’ Attitudes

“…IPE enables the sharing of skills and knowledge among health care professions and promotes better understanding, shared values, and respect for the roles of other health care professionals 32 – 34 . In countries such as the U.S., UK, Sweden, Canada, and Italy, IPE has been developed as a means of improving collaboration between health care and social work professionals 3 , 8 , 20 , 23 , 24 , 26 , 30 , 33 . The Centre for the Advancement of Interprofessional Education defines IPE as a teaching and learning process that fosters collaborative work between two or more professions 35 .…”

“…In our study, we assessed 16 studies that examined the effects of IPE on health professions students’ education and attitude differences by gender and profession. Most of these studies found that IPE learning had a positive effect on students’ understanding of collaboration and attitudes about interprofessional teamwork 3 , 20 – 22 , 24 , 26 , 30 , 36 , 37 . However, two studies concluded that IPE learning had no effect 18 or a negative effect 19 .…”

Interprofessionality in the model courses of study for healthcare and nursing professions in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany / Interprofessionalität in den Modellstudiengängen der Pflege- und Gesundheitsberufe in Nordrhein-Westfalen

“…Die Modelle veranschaulichen, wie facettenreich sich interprofessionelle Zusammenarbeit in der Praxis darstellt und wie komplex die Anforderungen an die Mitglieder des interprofessionellen Teams sind. International empfehlen daher viele Forscher/-innen eine Schulung der Gesundheitsfachkräfte in der interprofessionellen Zusammenarbeit, um im Praxisalltag erfolgreich in interprofessionellen Teams arbeiten zu können (Arfons et al, 2015;Herrmann et al, 2015;Sytsma et al, 2015). Eine interprofessionelle Ausbildung der Gesundheitsberufe gilt als innovative Strategie, um die Zusammenarbeit der Gesundheitsberufe zu fördern, dadurch das Gesundheitssystem zu stärken und bessere Ergebnisse an Patienten/-innen zu erzielen (WHO, 2010).…”