Resource Center

SETTING: An orthopaedic interprofessional training ward manned by students at a University Hospital.

OBJECTIVE: To assess to what extent students from different undergraduate programmes evaluated the effects of a 2-week rotation at the ward on their professional roles and the value of teamwork within health care.

BACKGROUND: Although care pathways are often said to promote teamwork, high-level evidence that supports this statement is lacking. Furthermore, knowledge on conditions and facilitators for successful pathway implementation is scarce. The objective of the European Quality of Care Pathway (EQCP) study is therefore to study the impact of care pathways on interprofessional teamwork and to build up understanding on the implementation process.

A review of the formal ethics consultations performed at a rural academic medical center during 2006 revealed that only 5 of 72 consultations were initiated by nurses. A descriptive exploratory convenience study used a 3-item survey to collect information from registered nurses who provide direct patient care at the rural academic medical center.

OBJECTIVES: To determine whether a peer-to-peer education program was an expedient and effective approach to improve knowledge and promote interprofessional communication and collaboration.

DESIGN: Trained pharmacy students taught nursing students, medical students, and medical residents about the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit (Part D), in 1- to 2-hour lectures.

Nationally and internationally, the terms “interprofessional learning” (IPL) and “collaborative working” are prominent in health care politics (General Medical Council, 2002; World Health Organization, 1988).

BACKGROUND: Existing validated measures of pharmacist-physician collaboration focus on measuring attitudes toward collaboration and do not measure frequency of collaborative interactions.

OBJECTIVE: To develop and validate an instrument to measure the frequency of collaboration between pharmacists and general practitioners (GPs) from the pharmacist's perspective.

The purpose of this study was to compare which learning outcomes relating to an Interprofessional Training Unit (ITU) experience were found to be most important by students and by alumni. A cohort of 428 students in the ITU was asked to write three short statements describing the most important learning outcomes from the ITU. Alumni from the same cohort were after graduation asked the same question. Furthermore, they were asked to fill out a 12-item questionnaire. The statements concerning learning outcome were analysed qualitatively and categorized.

OBJECTIVES: Evidence suggests that doctors and nurses do not always work collaboratively in health care settings and that this contributes to suboptimal patient care. However, there is little information on interprofessional collaboration (IPC) among new medical and nursing graduates working together for the first time in a multidisciplinary health care team. Our aim was to understand the nature of the interactions, activities and issues affecting these new graduates in order to inform interventions to improve IPC in this context.

BACKGROUND: Effective interprofessional teamwork is an essential component for the delivery of high-quality patient care in an increasingly complex medical environment. The objective is to evaluate whether the implementation of care pathways (CPs) improves teamwork in an acute hospital setting.

The importance and necessity of interprofessional collaboration (IPC) present challenges for educators as they determine how best to achieve IPC through interprofessional education (IPE). Simulation-based teaching has been shown to enhance students' understanding of professional roles and promote positive attitudes toward team members; yet, empirical evidence providing direction on the conditions necessary to promote these positive outcomes is lacking.