Perceptions of an international interprofessional education experience: Findings from students based in Europe and North America

Abstract

The globalisation of healthcare is changing the demands placed on health professionals. It requires different skills and thought processes across national borders. Thinking in an innovative manner may provide healthcare workers with some of the necessary tools to facilitate international change by increasing students' mental flexibility and ability to apply solutions in multiple contexts. We created the International Innovation Program for health profession education students to learn about and implement the innovation process. The programme provides students the opportunity to learn in interprofessional, international teams and apply didactic knowledge to community problems using the innovation process. The purpose of this article is to describe student perceptions across 4 years of programme implementation. Through analysis of closed-ended survey data, we found that students who participated in the programme reported improvements in collaboration and teamwork, project management, interprofessional teamwork, professional growth and development, thinking in an innovative manner, research and development skills, information seeking, and willingness to work on international projects. Analysis of the open-ended questions revealed five themes: language, teamwork and collaboration, cultural awareness, innovation process, and personal growth and self-improvement. The long-term, follow-up data indicate that these attributes can be transferred into a clinical context which have implications for improved collaboration and patient care.

Navigating in a landscape of practices : Healthcare students’ interprofessional collaboration and learning

“…Other perspective on IPE outcomes concern the patient and whether they get better/safer care (Hallin et al, 2011;Reeves et al, 2015). Similarly, there are several studies that focus on organizational conditions and obstacles to being able to carry out various IPEactivities (Schapmire et al, 2018;Wilhelmsson et al, 2009), Other studies address students' experiences of undergoing some kind of IPE stage in their education (Macauley et al, 2016).…”

“…Research has also been able to show that students perceive IPE as helpful in understanding the roles and responsibilities of other professions (Macauley et al, 2016…”

Are the stars aligned? Healthcare students’ conditions for negotiating tasks and competencies during interprofessional clinical placement

“…Research on IPE has so far informed us that students report gaining a better understanding of interprofessional collaboration after doing IPE [ 13 ]. They also report gaining a better understanding of different roles and responsibilities [ 14 , 15 ]. This helps us understand students’ perspectives and experiences but does not tell us as much regarding how students enact negotiations during interprofessional clinical placement.…”