Towards interprofessional patient care: Health profession students exploring interprofessional collaboration in group meetings in joint clinical placement

Abstract

The aim of this study is to develop knowledge about how health profession students learn interprofessional collaboration in group meetings during a joint voluntary period of practice. It is an observational study. Interprofessional student groups were followed throughout a two-week practice period. The groups had a mandate to independently develop interprofessional collaboration in the healthcare of the patients they were assigned to. Each student group consisted of one student from three or four different health professional programmes, namely physiotherapy, occupational therapy, nursing and medicine. The students were in the final year of their programmes. The data forming the basis for the development of knowledge in this dissertation were generated through observations of and informal conversations with the students during their clinical practice. The data consist of audio recordings from group meetings arranged by the students and informal meetings with the researcher, in addition to field notes. A thematic analysis of the data was conducted. Interpretation of the data was based on a general practice theory worldview, more particularly Wenger’s socio-cultural learning theory on communities of practice. The study shows that the students developed mutual engagement (Sub-study I), a multi-professional knowledge base (Sub-study II) and multidimensional patient descriptions (Sub-study III) in their groups. These developments seem to be a result of the students initiating an experimental partnership when they met. The interaction that emerged in the student groups throughout the practice period can be understood as a general expression of how the students started to move towards interprofessional collaboration in patient care. The knowledge generated in this study can enhance understanding of how interprofessional work can be learned and thereby also lead to greater holistic understanding of what interprofessional learning is. In this way, the knowledge can also inform the ongoing development of interprofessional learning activities in health professional programmes nationally and internationally.