Learning the 'SMART' way... results from a pilot study evaluating an interprofessional acute care study day

A significant number of patients requiring critical care are now being managed outside of critical care facilities. There is evidence that staff looking after these patients lack the necessary knowledge and skills to care for them safely, and that effective pre-registration education can play a significant role in addressing these shortfalls in nurses' knowledge and skills. A team from Sheffield Hallam University, in collaboration with the University of Sheffield, developed a pilot one day interprofessional acute illness programme which was called SMART® (Student Management of Acute illness - Recognition and Treatment). To evaluate the pilot programme, 16 student doctors and 72 student nurses were recruited. A pre- and post-course questionnaire based on the Featherstone et al. (2005) evaluation of ALERT was used to ascertain the students' general level of knowledge of the deteriorating patient, their experiences of and confidence in caring for an acutely unwell patient, and their level of comfort with interprofessional working. The results from the pilot study indicate that the students' levels of knowledge, their levels of confidence and their comfort with interprofessional working all rose after undertaking the programme. The pilot study has a number of implications for the future teaching and learning of acute care clinical skills, within a theoretically based curriculum.