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Although interprofessional teamwork and collaboration are considered key elements for improving patient outcomes, there are few reports of controlled studies involving interprofessional training of health care learners in the ambulatory primary care setting. We describe an educational program for teams of nurse practitioners, family medicine residents and social work students to work together at clinical sites in the delivery of longitudinal care in primary care ambulatory clinics. Year 1 was a planning year.

Faculty from four disciplines at a small Liberal Arts College in an American Midwestern city collaborated on an interdisciplinary pre-service project. Students in nursing, physical therapy, social work and special education voluntarily participated in one of two group methods of teaching. The purpose of this study was to examine whether students learn interprofessional teaming more effectively from (i) discussion of research, faculty modeling and role-playing, or from (ii) discussion of research and role-playing.

PubMed URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18412909

OBJECTIVE: National policy makers and psychiatric educators have established the goals of teaching and promoting interdisciplinary care as high priorities. This article describes the implementation of an interprofessional seminar for which the dual aims were to provide a knowledge base for treating individuals with serious mental illness and to teach how to work collaboratively with other disciplines.

Caring for older adults has become increasingly complex due to multiple health and societal factors. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of an interprofessional community-based educational project on students' attitudes toward other health care professions and older adults. A pretest and posttest quasi-experimental research design was implemented with 64 participating students from four health care professions (nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and pharmacy).

Effective delivery of high-quality palliative care requires effective interprofessional team working by skilled healthcare professionals. Palliative care is therefore highly suitable for sowing the seeds of interprofessional team working in early professional undergraduate medical education. Integrating palliative medicine in undergraduate medical education curricula seems to be a must.

BACKGROUND AND METHODS:

Medical students, nursing students, and other health care professionals in training were integrated with health care workers on interprofessional quality improvement (QI) teams at our academic health center. Teams received training in QI, accompanied by expert QI mentoring, with dual goals of increasing expertise in improvement while improving care.

RESULTS:

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.

Future health professionals are often educated with other students of their same discipline when, in practice, they will be working with professionals from other backgrounds to provide care for the patient. Complex issues of ethical concern are common to health professionals due to modern technology. This paper describes the evolution of an interprofessional bioethics course that had a unique combination of students and faculty. Innovative teaching methods were utilized and continuously refined based on student evaluations.

PubMed URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20148622