Collaboration versus competition: an interprofessional education experience

Our purpose was to assess student, preceptor, and patient satisfaction with a phased pilot project to introduce interprofessional education teams into a clinical setting.

Focus groups with students and preceptors were used to evaluate acceptability with interprofessional education teams. We assessed pairings of second-year physician assistant students (PAS2) with both first- and second-year medical students (MS1, MS2) for three to eight clinic sessions in a university-based primary care clinic, over a period of 2 years.

Twenty students and seven preceptors participated in paired clinical placement. All students agreed that the pairing was helpful for their learning. MS felt that they benefitted from the clinical experience of the PAS, whereas PAS felt that MS brought depth of information from their didactic learning. All students wished that the clinic sessions could have been more frequent. Preceptors did not feel precepting two students was more burdensome than precepting one student but did feel it was important to choose appropriate students who were interested in working together and teaching each other. Preceptors felt that the MS2/PAS2 pairing was optimal.

Students and preceptors were all satisfied with interprofessional teams in the clinical setting. This model provides one solution to the dilemma of multiple learners requiring training in a limited number of clinical placement sites.