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BACKGROUND:

Interprofessional Education (IPE) is now spreading worldwide and many universities are now including IPE in their curricula. The aim of this study was to investigate whether or not such student characteristics as gender, previous working experience in healthcare, educational progress and features of the learning environment, such as educational programmes and curriculum design, have an impact on their open-mindedness about co-operation with other professions.

METHODS:

This study explored status differences in interprofessional teams and their link with efficiency. In total, 62 teams (423 individuals) from occupational health-care, psychiatry, rehabilitation and school health-care responded to a questionnaire. Fifty-four of those teams (360 individuals) also participated in an observation session simulating problem-solving team meetings. Data were reduced to a number of indexes: self-assessed/perceived equality, functional influence and efficiency; and observed verbal dominance/activity and problem-solving capacity.

CONTEXT:

OBJECTIVE:

To evaluate whether ethics rounds stimulated ethical reflection.

METHODS:

Philosopher-ethicist-led interprofessional team ethics rounds concerning dialysis patient care problems were applied at three Swedish hospitals. The philosophers were instructed to stimulate ethical reflection and promote mutual understanding between professions but not to offer solutions. Questionnaires directly before and after rounds were answered by 194 respondents. The analyses were primarily content analysis with Boyd's framework but were also statistical in nature.

BACKGROUND:

Active patient-based learning by working together at an interprofessional clinical education ward (CEW) increases collaborative and professional competence among students.

AIM:

To assess the patients' perceptions of collaborative and communicative aspects of care when treated by interprofessional student teams as compared to usual care.

METHOD:

The main purpose of this study was, firstly, to evaluate the effect of an intervention aimed at improving interprofessional collaboration and service quality, and secondly, to examine if collaboration could predict burnout, engagement and service quality among human service professionals working with children and adolescents. The intervention included the establishment of local interprofessional teams and offering courses. The sample was recruited from six different small municipalities in Northern Norway (N = 93) and a comparison group from four similar municipalities (N = 58).

BACKGROUND: Good intercollegial communication is a relatively unstudied topic, although it is important for both health professionals and patients, contributing to enhanced well-being, self-awareness and integrity for health professionals, and positively affecting patient outcome and satisfaction.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether a communication skills training course would improve intercollegial communication in an orthopaedic department.

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 objective of this study was to better understand the long-term effects of an improved model for cooperation on employment between rehabilitation professionals in vocational rehabilitation (VR). To compare these effects with those associated with the traditional model of cooperation. The study featured a group of patients who participated in a developmental project. All of the patients had some degree of restricted work capacity, which was evidenced somatically as well as mentally/socially.

Research shows slow improvement of the care of dying persons and their significant others. One of the reasons for that is the lack of palliative care education as an integral part of health professionals' undergraduate education. The paper discusses an attempt to develop innovative forms of palliative care education: an international, interprofessional and IT-supported undergraduate course for Swedish and Slovenian students of nursing, medicine, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, psychology and social work, which has been developed jointly by the two authors.