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Although physicians and nurses play critical roles in providing team-based collaborative care, the literature on current relationships between physicians and nurses in typical health care settings reveals troublesome characteristics that affect the quality of the patient care that they provide. Studies report communication failures, poor coordination, and fragmented care within and across organizations, which then have been associated with medication errors, patient safety issues, and patient deaths.

PURPOSE:

Since the release of the 1988 World Health Organization report on the need for interprofessional education (IPE) programs, various forms of IPE curricula have been implemented within institutions of higher education. The purpose of this paper is to describe results of a study using the Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale (RIPLS) to compare physician assistant (PA) students with other health professions students.

METHODS:

This article reports our experience of developing half-day sessions of interprofessional simulation for pre-qualifying students from medicine, nursing, physiotherapy, radiography and operating department practice. One hundred and ninety-one students participated in a session. A questionnaire consisting of Likert type, visual analog and open comment questions explored their perceptions of the sessions as a learning experience, their attitudes toward interprofessional learning and the factors important for good patient care either after, or before and after, the session, as appropriate.

BACKGROUND:

In neonatal intensive care, a child's death is often preceded by a medical decision. Nurses, social workers and pastors, however, are often excluded from ethical case deliberation. If multiprofessional ethical case deliberations do take place, participants may not always know how to perform to the fullest.

SETTING:

A level-IIID neonatal intensive care unit of a paediatric teaching hospital in the Netherlands.

METHODS:

OBJECTIVE:

To evaluate healthcare students' perceptions of an introductory interprofessional exercise and their team dynamics.

DESIGN:

Attitudes amongst health professionals can impact on the effectiveness of teamworking and patient care. Interprofessional education (IPE) is thought to contribute to the development of positive attitudes. An Interprofessional Training Unit (ITU) was set up to create an optimal learning environment for healthcare students. Students' attitudes were assessed, using a version of the Attitudes to Health Professionals Questionnaire (AHPQ) that had been translated into the students' native language. This paper describes the process undertaken to obtain a trustworthy translation.

The study aims to evaluate an interprofessional community-based learning event, focussing on disability. The learning opportunity was based on the Leicester Model of Interprofessional Education, organised around the experiences and perceptions of service users and their carers. Programme participants were drawn from medicine and social work education in Leicester, UK, bringing together diverse traditions in the care of people with disabilities.