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PURPOSE:

Deciding about the limitation of life-sustaining treatment (LST) is a major challenge for intensive care medicine. The aim of the study was to investigate the practices and perspectives of German intensive care nurses and physicians on limiting LST.

METHODS:

We conducted an anonymous, self-administered questionnaire survey among the 268 nurses and 95 physicians on all 10 intensive care units of the Munich University Hospital, Germany.

RESULTS:

Professionals bring their own personal and professional culture, competence, and interaction styles to the work setting. This study explores how undergraduate students (n = 619) at five different professional qualification programs from two Norwegian university colleges perceived interprofession education and collaboration (interprofessionalism). The student groups were drawn from nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy, biomedical laboratory science, and radiography.

BACKGROUND: Health care professionals are supposed to work in teams. Students in health care need to learn how to collaborate during their undergraduate education. Interprofessional learning environments, where collaboration is necessary, may be differently accepted by students depending on their approach to learning.

AIM: We investigated health care students' evaluations of interprofessional clinical training in relation to their study orientations.

This study investigated online interaction within a curriculum unit at the University of Toronto, Canada that included an interprofessional case study discussion in a mixed-mode (face-to-face and online) format. Nine of the 81 teams that completed the four-day curriculum were selected for detailed review based on the attitudes students expressed on a survey about the value of collaborating online for enhancing their appreciation of other health care professions. Five of the teams selected were 'positive' and four were 'negative'.

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.

METHOD:

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.

This paper examines the readiness for and attitudes toward interprofessional (IP) education in students across four diverse educational institutions with different educational mandates. The four educational institutions (research-intensive university, baccalaureate, polytechnical institute and community college) partnered to develop, deliver and evaluate IP modules in simulation learning environments. As one of the first steps in planning, the Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale was delivered to 1530 students from across the institutions.

The purpose of this study is to examine referrals of nurse practitioners providing primary healthcare (PHC NPs) to better understand how PHC NPs collaborate with other healthcare professionals and contribute to interprofessional care. The analysis is based on the data from a survey of 378 PHC NPs registered in Ontario, Canada in 2008. Overall, 69% of PHC NPs made referrals to family physicians (FPs) and 67% of PHC NPs received referrals from FPs. Almost 50% of PHC NPs had bidirectional referrals between them and FPs. Eighty-nine percent of PHC NPs made referrals to specialist physicians.

BACKGROUND:

A four-year action research study was conducted across the Australian Capital Territory health system to strengthen interprofessional collaboration (IPC) though multiple intervention activities.

METHODS:

This paper explores the relationship between time allocation on formal and informal forms of contact within interprofessional teams and an interdependent collaboration. Data were collected by a questionnaire including items on work organization, team climate and time allocation that was responded to by 226 professionals from 44 interprofessional teams. An additional sample of 139 professionals from 18 teams responded to the same questionnaire except for the item on time allocation. The teams worked within occupational health care, psychiatry, rehabilitation and school health care.