Description:
Pre-professional healthcare courses, including nursing, are increasingly focused on interprofessional learning and experimentation with clinical education in ‘training wards’. This involves students from at least two disciplines who, under supervision, are responsible for patients' care. There is no consensus on how students' clinical learning experiences in this context are evaluated. We report the development and testing of the Interprofessional Clinical Placement Learning Environment Inventory (ICPLEI) in the Australian context. A question set was developed to measure student's perceptions of key variables in an interprofessional clinical learning environment: orientation, supervision, roles, learning and autonomy. An expert nursing panel rated items for a Content Validity Index of .93. Reliability was tested with 38 students. After a 2-week interprofessional ward placement nursing, medical and allied health students (n = 38) rated their learning environment highly, with median responses 4 or 5 of five (mean total 83%). The scale was reliable with a Cronbach alpha of .80 and moderate item-to-total correlations for 22/26 items. The Interprofessional Clinical Placement Learning Environment Inventory is a reliable, feasible, fast to complete tool, suitable for use with pre-registration healthcare students in this setting. Further testing of the tool's psychometric properties is recommended.
Description:
Background: How willing are today's medical, nursing and other healthcare students to undertake some of their studies as shared learning? There is a lack of evidence of students' views by discipline despite this being a priority task for higher education sectors. This study explored the views of nursing, midwifery, nursing-emergency health (paramedic), medical, physiotherapy and nutrition-dietetics students. Methods: Senior undergraduate students from six disciplines at one university completed the Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale prior to participating in interprofessional clinical learning modules. Results: For 741 students, the highest ranked response was agreement about a need for teamwork (mean 4.42 of 5 points). Nursing students held significantly more positive attitudes towards Teamwork/ Collaboration, and were more positive about Professional Identity than medical students (p < .001). Midwifery and nursing-emergency-health students rejected uncertainty about Roles/Responsibilities compared with medical students (p < .001). One-third of all students who had prior experience of interprofessional learning held more positive attitudes in each of four attitude domains (p < .05). Conclusion: Overall, students' attitudes towards interprofessional learning were positive and all student groups were willing to engage in learning interprofessionally. Early introduction of IPL is recommended. Further studies should explore the trajectory of students' attitudes throughout the university degree.
Description:
Background There is an ongoing need for preregistration healthcare students to acquire skills that equip them to collaborate with others for patient-centred care and outcomes. Traditional models of university learning and clinical placement seldom offer students the opportunities to experience interprofessional learning or to ‘test the waters’ of collaborative practice. Aims A range of interprofessional learning opportunities were offered to preregistration healthcare students while on clinical placement in a large metropolitan health service. This research evaluated interprofessional learning opportunities for preregistration healthcare students as preparation for collaborative practice. It also explored the perceived value for student learning of these activities and examined the challenges and opportunities accompanying the design and implementation of the student-led beds model. Methods A mixed methods approach was undertaken. In particular, there was a focus on the experiences of students in an immersive two-week interprofessional placement in which interprofessional student teams worked together to lead the care of inpatients in a variety of clinical settings. This experience enabled students to experience authentic collaborative practice in a real clinical setting. The Theory of Planned Behaviour was used to retrospectively evaluate the findings presented in the published papers. Outcomes This research reflects a journey of student experience of clinical interprofessional learning (IPL), from understanding attitudes to IPL to perceptions of clinical workshops and culminating in the experience of an immersive clinical placement. Outcomes included positive learning experiences and a sense of clarity of professional and interprofessional identity. The model of placement was informed by the international literature, most notably the ‘student-led bed’ model pioneered at Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Despite solid evidence of the usefulness and efficacy of this model, it is yet to be embedded in clinical environments across the world. This research demonstrated that the model can be successfully implemented in a metropolitan health service and may contribute to real behavioural change of our future health professionals
Description:
Background There is an ongoing need for preregistration healthcare students to acquire skills that equip them to collaborate with others for patient-centred care and outcomes. Traditional models of university learning and clinical placement seldom offer students the opportunities to experience interprofessional learning or to ‘test the waters’ of collaborative practice. Aims A range of interprofessional learning opportunities were offered to preregistration healthcare students while on clinical placement in a large metropolitan health service. This research evaluated interprofessional learning opportunities for preregistration healthcare students as preparation for collaborative practice. It also explored the perceived value for student learning of these activities and examined the challenges and opportunities accompanying the design and implementation of the student-led beds model. Methods A mixed methods approach was undertaken. In particular, there was a focus on the experiences of students in an immersive two-week interprofessional placement in which interprofessional student teams worked together to lead the care of inpatients in a variety of clinical settings. This experience enabled students to experience authentic collaborative practice in a real clinical setting. The Theory of Planned Behaviour was used to retrospectively evaluate the findings presented in the published papers. Outcomes This research reflects a journey of student experience of clinical interprofessional learning (IPL), from understanding attitudes to IPL to perceptions of clinical workshops and culminating in the experience of an immersive clinical placement. Outcomes included positive learning experiences and a sense of clarity of professional and interprofessional identity. The model of placement was informed by the international literature, most notably the ‘student-led bed’ model pioneered at Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Despite solid evidence of the usefulness and efficacy of this model, it is yet to be embedded in clinical environments across the world. This research demonstrated that the model can be successfully implemented in a metropolitan health service and may contribute to real behavioural change of our future health professionals
Description:
This work was funded by the Council of Deans of Nursing and Midwifery (Australia and New Zealand) – 2019. The funding body had no role in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, or in writing the manuscript.
Description:
This work was funded by the Council of Deans of Nursing and Midwifery (Australia and New Zealand) – 2019. The funding body had no role in the design of the study and collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, or in writing the manuscript.
Description:
The purpose of this article is to describe the Nominal Group Technique and its application as a consensus-generating approach in nursing research. The approach incorporates face-to-face meetings to explore opinions, generate ideas, and determine priorities. The nominal group technique process, which is based on a study designed to develop a nursing student clinical placement (clinical practicum) evaluation tool, is described. Advantages of the approach include creative face-to-face discussions with minimal resource demands. The nominal group technique is beneficial and can be used to achieve consensus in nursing research, but a lack of anonymity may preclude the process in some investigations.