Learning with, from and about each other : interprofessional education on a training ward in municipal care for older persons

The overall aim of this thesis was to describe and evaluate interprofessional education on an interprofessional training ward in municipal care for older persons. Interprofessional education has for some years now been proposed as a means to meet the call for effective collaboration, co-ordination and quality in health and social care. On the interprofessional training ward considered in this thesis, stu-dents from nursing, occupational therapy and social work programmes worked together for three weeks to learn with, from and about each other. In the first study (I) students’ perceptions and attitudes concerning the training on the ward were studied. An attitude questionnaire and a retrospective goal-fulfilment questionnaire were distributed to all students. Non-parametric statistics were used for the quantitative analysis, and qualitative content analysis for the qualitative parts. The results showed that the students had positive attitudes to-wards the training ward and in most respects the learning goals set up for the course were considered to have been met. In Studies II and III the focus was on students’ knowledge and understanding of their own and the others’ professions. Sixteen students were interviewed before and after. In the analysis of the interviews a phenomenographic approach was used. The findings showed a variation from simplistic conceptions of the profes-sions in terms of tasks to more complex conceptions in terms of the profession’s knowledge, responsibility and values. Differences in the ways professions were described concerning their professional stance towards the patients were espe-cially accentuated. The comparison between before and after indicated that there were changes in the students’ views. In some areas, however, there remained dis-crepancies between students’ understanding of their own profession and the oth-ers’ understanding of this profession. To promote mutual agreement on each other’s role this needs to be given careful consideration. In the fourth study (IV) the focus was on the students’ participation in the community of practice on the ward, and the findings reveal an ambivalent picture of this participation (and thus of their learning). The students collaborated in the care of the patients. However, they sometimes experienced a gap between expec-tations and reality with regard to both the profession-specific and the interprofes-sional training on the ward: what they had to do was sometimes felt to be be-neath their qualifications and irrelevant to the programme of education they were pursuing. This applied to all three groups, but especially student social workers. Interprofessional training wards can promote interprofessional learning, but it is crucial that setting should be right: it needs to be realistic for all the students involved, offering relevant profession-specific and interprofessional tasks and situations where the students can develop skills in collaborative, patient-centred care