Professional collaboration in students of Medicine Faculty and School of Nursing

This descriptive study has been planned to analyze the professional collaboration among the students of Ege University, Faculty of Medicine and School of Nursing. The study group consisted of 137 5th and 6th grade students from the Faculty of Medicine and 142 3rd and 4th grade students from the School of Nursing. The participation rate is 94%. For data collection, a questionnaire form (30 questions) which was specially developed for the purpose of the study and the Jefferson Scale of Attitudes toward Physician-Nurse Collaboration (15 questions) were used. Permission was granted for the research by Ege University School of Nursing Ethical Committee and the Office of the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. The professional collaboration mean score of the students from the Faculty of Medicine who participated in the study was 30.40+/-5.82 and the professional collaboration mean score of the students from the School of Nursing was 26.11+/-5.27. The difference between the mean scores of professional collaboration was found to be significant in terms of their profession (p<0.01). Physicians expressed more positive attitudes toward collaboration than nurses while female physicians expressed more positive attitudes toward collaboration than male physicians.