Nurses' views of interprofessional education and collaboration: A comparative study of recent graduates from three universities

Abstract

Today interprofessional education is spread throughout the world. In Sweden only one of the existing nursing programmes has an IPE curriculum on several levels during the training.The aim of this study was to examine how nurses who recently graduated from universities with IPE or non-IPE curricula perceive the importance of different educational goals and whether they found themselves prepared for their profession, and especially for collaboration with other professions.Three universities with different commitments to interprofessional education were studied.We used a survey with eight different targets: communication skills, co-operation with other professions, problem solving capability, self-directed learning skills, whether their education has prepared them to work professionally, to perform research, to take care of acutely ill patients, to work preventively and working as a nurse. The participants were asked if their undergraduate education had prepared them for these targets and if they perceived that the targets were important goals for their education.A main result in this study was that nurses who had recently graduated from the IPEuniversity perceived to a greater extent that their undergraduate training had prepared them to work together with other professions in comparison with nursing students from non-IPE universities.

Interprofessional education as an approach for reforming health professions education in Brazil: emerging findings

“…The preliminary findings from the student focus groups suggest the need for greater communication and interaction between health professionals to improve collaboration and therefore meet the complex needs of healthcare systems, as noted by Wilhelmsson, Svensson, Timpka, and Faresjö (2013). The findings also highlight the importance of IPE in advancing the agenda for reforming the education of health professions to become more collaborative.…”

Effective interprofessional simulation training for medical and midwifery students

“…A number of undergraduate IP initiatives have been described, but their evaluation has often lacked rigour6–8 and their impact on attitudes and behaviours has been questionable. Undergraduate IPT has been pioneered in Canada, Australia, USA and Europe,9 10 and in the UK it has been mandated by the Quality Assurance Agency, the General Medical Council (GMC) and the Nursing & Midwifery Council,11 yet there is still evidence of poor IP working. Undermining behaviour is consistently reported in GMC and National Health Service (NHS) Staff surveys, with a significant proportion of this damaging behaviour occurring between different healthcare professional groups 12 13…”

Why we need more research into interprofessional education

“…The WHO and its partners acknowledge that, after almost fifty years of research, the evidence sufficiently indicates that effective IPE enables effective collaborative practice (WHO, 2011). (Empirical studies nationally and internationally confirm that students who have been exposed to IPE pre-qualification experiences become more confident in their communication and interprofessional relationships (Wilhelmsson et al, 2013) and also more respectful of other professions (Gilligan et al, 2014).…”

“…Fifty years later, interest in IPE has been steadily growing and has been given There is some evidence that IPE interventions at undergraduate level do not always survive the transition to the work environment and do not have the expected outcomes regarding communication and collaboration at the clinical setting (Wilhelmsson et al, 2013). Investing mostly in pre-registration IPE could arguably, therefore, be ineffective if there is no followthrough to consolidate the benefits gained into the early years of clinical practice and beyond.…”