<p>Stimulating Students’ Interprofessional Teamwork Skills Through Community-Based Education: A Mixed Methods Evaluation</p>

Abstract

Background: Interprofessional education (IPE) is suggested as a good means to prepare future healthcare professionals for collaborative work in interprofessional teams enabling them to solve complex health problems. Previous studies have advocated experiential IPE, including community-based IPE (CBIPE). This study aims to evaluate a CBIPE programme by exploring the students' perception toward CBIPE design and toward groups' teamwork. Methods: To identify students' perceptions of teamwork, the Interprofessional Teamwork Evaluation questionnaire was administered to 254 students of medical, nursing and midwifery programme. Three uni-professional focus group (FG) discussions were conducted to analyse the students' perception of the design of community-based education and underlying reasons for teamwork. Results: FGs reported three aspects that influence skills development in collaborative practice among students that shed light on why midwifery and nursing students held less positive perceptions of communication and mutual support: 1) communication gap due to lack of confidence, 2) contrasting ways of thinking affect communication in decisionmaking, and 3) the leadership culture in the health services. Conclusion: A CBIPE programme was successfully implemented at Universitas Islam Sultan Agung. It demonstrated that students in the health professions can develop skills in collaborative practice despite having some problems with communication and mutual support.

Undergraduate nursing students’ self-reported professional behaviour at the University of Namibia

“…Nursing students’ collaboration with other healthcare professionals and the community was rated high with a mean score of 4.16 ± 0.42. These results contradict existing literature where nursing students reported being insecure in collaborating with medical students, lacked confidence and understanding of team work (Lestari, Scherpbier & Stalmeijer 2020 :1143; Oxelmark et al 2017 :14). Considering that nurses work as part of a team, there is need to help student develop collaboration skills (Oldland et al 2020 :151).…”

“…Considering that nurses work as part of a team, there is need to help student develop collaboration skills (Oldland et al 2020 :151). There is evidence that some interventions can work to improve collaboration skills amongst healthcare students including nurses (Lestari et al 2020 :1143; Oxelmark et al 2017 :14).…”

Effect of community-based education on undergraduate nursing students’ skills: a systematic review

“…Similar to other studies, the results of the present systematic review showed that community-based education improved teamwork skills in nursing students [24,25,27,29,30]. Nursing students considered this training program to be successful, and felt that it enhanced their group activities and teamwork skills.…”

“…1. Seventeen articles published during 2004-2020 were included: including five quasi-experimental studies, three descriptive studies, four mixed method studies, and five qualitative studies [11,12,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. The total number of participants was 1,866, ranging from 14 to 613 in each study.…”

“…Nine studies mentioned increasing self-confidence [11,20,21,23,24,[26][27][28]32] and five studies mentioned increasing knowledge and awareness [20-22, 25, 28]. Promoting teamwork skills was mentioned in four studies [25,27,29,30] and improving thinking skills through education was mentioned in three studies [11,23,25]. The content of the community-based curriculum and the strategy for its implementation varied across studies, but all studies were conducted in community-based settings.…”