Use of profession-role exchange in an interprofessional student team-based community health service-learning experience

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p><jats:bold>Background: </jats:bold>During interprofessional clinical practice, compared to understanding of one’s own professional role and function, it might be more difficult to clarify the roles and contributions of the other health-care team members because of the inter-professional barrier. In order to provide students the opportunity for real experience with other professions in team environments and enhance their perceptions of other professions’ role, this study developed a comprehensive and multi-dimension extracurricular interprofessional education (IPE) model through designing and integrating a profession-role exchange component, that was medical students as pharmacists or nurses, pharmacy students as physicians or nurses, and nursing students as physicians or pharmacists in the interprofessional health-care student team, into the service learning experience in a real community setting.<jats:bold>Methods:</jats:bold> In this pre/post-intervention study, the effect of integrated profession-role exchange experiences on the students’ attitudes towards interprofessional collaboration and their role clarification was evaluated among 60 student volunteers (20 medical students, 20 pharmacy students and 20 nursing students). All involved students were divided into the profession-role exchange intervention group and the control group. Subjects in the control group did not participate the profession-role exchange experiences, the other IPE procedures were the same for both groups. Three survey instruments for attitudes toward interprofessional clinical collaboration were respectively used to measure the students’ attitudes toward physician-pharmacist, physician-nurse and nurse-pharmacist collaborations. “Roles and responsibilities” subscale of Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale was used to evaluate the overall role clarification during IPE<jats:bold>Results:</jats:bold> Compared to the control IPE activity, the addition of profession-role exchange component resulted in the significant increase in students’ positive attitudes towards interprofessional collaboration, and the enhancement of students’ role awareness.<jats:bold>Conclusions: </jats:bold>The profession-role exchange might be more effective and better initiate students to the practice of interprofessional collaboration, and could be used as an effective IPE tool for improving the role awareness of health-care students.</jats:p>

Educación interprofesional en salud a través de la metodología de aprendizaje-servicio en estudiantes de primer año

“…Durante la pandemia del COVID-19, las asignaturas que histórica-mente se llevaron a cabo de manera presencial debieron migrar su metodología a formatos virtuales, requiriendo procesos de innovación docente. Ante ello, el DCS de la UC decide generar una instancia de EIP a través de su metodología de A+S, similar a lo reportado por Ryan et al (2015) y Wang et al (2020), ya que permite generar un aprendizaje situado, atendiendo los desafíos de las comunidades (Palos & Puig, 2006).…”

“…Al mismo tiempo, la EIP influye en disminuir el individualismo a través de la comunicación activa con las otras carreras y mejorar los niveles de empatía hacia los pacientes (Fenn et al, 2021;Jones et al, 2021;Tsakitzidis et al, 2021); sin embargo, es necesario reconocer que, el desarrollo de estas habilidades es complejo y lleva tiempo (Hammond & Morgan, 2021). Al trabajar en equipo para cuidar a los pacientes, este modelo de atención interprofesional hace posible el mejor uso de los recursos, mejora los resultados y es capaz de satisfacer las necesidades de salud cada vez más complejas de las personas (Wang et al, 2020).…”

“…Entre las variadas iniciativas educativas para la enseñanza del trabajo en equipo interdisciplinario, el aprendizaje servicio (A+S) ha atraído un gran interés por parte de los educadores de la salud (Ryan et al, 2015;Wang et al, 2020). En ese contexto, según Palos y Puig (2006), A+S es una metodología que vincula elementos del aprendizaje en los estudiantes como del servicio a la comunidad, a través de un proyecto, buscando generar un proceso bidireccional de abordaje de los problemas reales con la intención de mejorar las condiciones del socio comunitario.…”

Comparison of attitudes toward the medical student-led community health education service to support chronic disease self-management among students, faculty and patients

“…Based on their vibrancy, acquired professional knowledge and skills, as well as their awareness of local cultural customs, medical students have been well-accepted as a force multiplier for the community-based health service [17][18][19][20]. For example, medical students were involved in a student-led community-based prevention program for falls, which has been demonstrated to potentially enhance the sustainability of the program and reduce program costs [17].…”

“…For example, medical students were involved in a student-led community-based prevention program for falls, which has been demonstrated to potentially enhance the sustainability of the program and reduce program costs [17]. Our team previously recruited undergraduate students from medical and other health professions to participate in household visits for community residents suffering from diabetes aiming to increase diabetes self-management education [18]. Through a team-based model, medical students can channel their energy and passions to elevate the community health in any way they can [18,19].…”