INTER-PROFESSIONAL LEARNING

Evaluation of Inter-Professional Learning Sessions

Evaluation of Inter-Professional Learning Sessions

Discussion

It was expected that this thesis study would yield data to guide the design of a pre-qualification IPE programme and help identify successful strategies for implementation. Data would also help to determine whether third-year nursing and fourth-year medical students might be ready to learn together and how confident they were in their own professional role. It was also expected to provide students the opportunity to comment openly about shared learning that offers a broader interpretation of the results. The results of this study have provided guidance for developing an IPE programme for nursing and medical students in several ways. Firstly, data relating to 'Professional roles and responsibilities' indicated that these students were confident about their professional role and had developed a strong professional identity. It was apparent that medical students did not regard the nurses' role as that of 'handmaiden,' and nurses themselves was even more certain that this was not the case. This result is encouraging when compared with a study of medical students' views of nurses' roles undertaken by Webster (1985). Webster (1985) found that, 'Fewer than 20% of third and fourth year students exhibited awareness that nurses had legitimate roles that were independent of physicians' orders or expectations' (p. 315).

That medical students considered that they had more knowledge and skills to acquire than other disciplines is consistent with the findings of Horsburgh et al. (2001) and is a further indication of strong professional identity that medical students appear to have developed early in year one and retained to year four. Confidence in their own professional role is an important requisite for prequalification IPE and data clearly indicate that in this respect pre-qualification year 3 and 4 students are ready to work together. However, as will be discussed below it may be that by this stage discipline-specific learning approaches or 'cognitive maps' (Hall and Weaver, 2001, 867) are already established and these may inhibit as well as help inter-professional learning. The most striking results from this study were in providing a clear indication of students' attitudes to teamwork. Responses to questionnaire statements indicated a strong acknowledgement from both groups that learning to work in a team was important. This is again consistent with the results of Horsburgh et al. (2001) who used the RIPLS questionnaire with first year students. Complementary qualitative data from this study, however, said that paramount for medical students is that the purpose of sharing the learning was to learn about teamwork and professional roles.

For some this was further qualified by being linked to areas with common skills and goals. Medical students in this study had very specific expectations of shared learning - that it would provide the opportunity to learn about team working and enable them to understand and respect the roles and opinions of other professionals within the team. This group of medical students did not value shared learning for other reasons. They did not make an association between shared learning and ...