Achieving clinical nurse specialist competencies and outcomes through interdisciplinary education

Without formal education, many healthcare professionals fail to develop interdisciplinary team skills; however, when students are socialized to interdisciplinary practice through academic clinical learning experiences, effective collaboration skills can be developed. Increasingly, educational environments are challenged to include clinical experiences for students that teach and model interdisciplinary collaboration.

The purpose of this quality improvement initiative was to create an interdisciplinary educational experience for clinical nurse specialist (CNS) students and postgraduate physicians.

The interdisciplinary learning experience, supported by an educational grant, provided an interdisciplinary cohort of learners an opportunity to engage in a clinically focused learning experience. The interdisciplinary cohort consisted of CNS students and physicians in various stages of postgraduate training. The clinical experience selected was a quality improvement initiative in which the students were introduced to the concepts and tools of quality improvement. During this 1-month clinical experience, students applied the new skills by implementing a quality improvement project focusing on medication reconciliation in the outpatient setting. The CNS core competencies and outcomes were used to shape the experience for the CNS students.

The CNS students exhibited 5 of the 7 essential characteristics of the CNS (leadership, collaboration, consultation skills, ethical conduct, and professional attributes) while demonstrating competencies and fulfilling performance expectations. During this learning experience, the CNS students focused on competencies and outcomes in the organizational sphere of influence. Multiple facilitating factors and barriers were identified.

This interdisciplinary clinical experience in a quality improvement initiative provided valuable opportunities for CNS students to develop essential CNS characteristics and to explore practice competencies in the area of systems.

Interdisciplinary clinical experiences offer students opportunities to develop needed collaboration and communication skills. Educators should create interdisciplinary educational experiences for students to better prepare them for their roles in a clinical setting.