Observing inter-professional videos: impact of collaboration between physicians and psychologists on attitude and knowledge acquisition

Abstract

BackgroundInter-professional collaboration (IPC) is an important prerequisite for successful patient care. Even though inter-professional education (IPE) is increasingly common in undergraduate medical education, few IPE approaches explicitly address the IPC among medical students and students of psychology. IPE videos can be used to give learners the opportunity to gather relevant knowledge from different professional perspectives. So far it has been unclear whether it is enough when the topic of the video itself is inter-professional or if it is necessary for experts from different professions explicitly to appear in the video.MethodsIn an online experiment, medical students watched one of two videos about Parkinson’s disease (PD) and the care of PD patients. The information was either provided by protagonists from only one profession (i.e., physicians; mono-professional condition) or provided by protagonists from two different professions (i.e., physicians and a psychologist; inter-professional condition). Attitude toward inter-professional interaction and learning, evaluation of the entertaining and illustrative character of the video, attitude toward physicians and psychologists, importance of IPC, evaluation of psychological treatment support, and knowledge acquisition served as dependent variables.ResultsThe analysis was based on 140 participants (74 in the mono-, 66 in the inter-professional condition). We found that the inter-professional video was perceived to be more entertaining than the mono-professional video (t(138) = -2.227; p = 0.028; d= 0.38). The inter-professional video was also considered to be more illustrative (t(138) = -6.269; p < 0.001; d= 1.06). Moreover, participants improved their attitude toward physicians by watching the video (F(1, 138) = 4.860, p < 0.001, η2p = 0.11), but they did not change their attitude toward psychologists (p = 0.146). Participants who watched the inter-professional video considered IPC to be more important than participants who watched the mono-professional video (t(138) = -7.954; p < 0.001; d= 1.354). Finally, the inter-professional video led to better performance in the knowledge test (t(138) = -2.285; p = 0.024; d= 0.04).ConclusionsInter-professional videos showing explicitly the appearance of experts from different professions come along with several advantages. We discuss the implications of their application in educational practice.Trial registrationThe study was pre-registered on the pre-registration platform AsPredicted (aspredicted.org) before we began data collection (registration number: #33143).

Observing Inter-Professional Videos: Impact of Collaboration Between Physicians and Psychologists on Attitude and Knowledge Acquisition

“…Videos are already widely used in health communication 22,23 and medical education, because they are an illustrative teaching format 24,25 and are effective for teaching procedural knowledge. 26,27 Recent findings indicate that video formats show great potential for the acquisition of inter-professional competences 28 and are considered to be relevant for inter-professional learning. This can be explained on the basis of Bandura's social learning theory, especially with regard to the fact that observational learning is suitable for the acquisition of social behavior.…”

“…33 Videos are relatively easy to implement and could provide the opportunity for students to experience medical and psychological role models in related clinical settings. In a previous study, 28 medical and physiotherapy students watched the same video that was interprofessional in 2 ways: The topic truly required an interprofessional approach, and protagonists from 2 different health professions appeared as role models. So far it has been unclear whether it is sufficient for making viewers learn about IPC and improving their attitude toward IPC and the collaborating professions simply to have the topic of the video be interprofessional, or if it is additionally necessary to have experts from multiple different professions explicitly appear in the video.…”