Effect of interprofessional education on oral assessment performance of nursing students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of interprofessional educational programmes on the improvement of nursing students' oral assessment performances by comparing their attitudes, confidence, abilities, and self-performance before and after the education.

The subjects included 112 first-year nursing students in a Japanese nursing school. They participated in the oral assessment educational programmes, which were supported by dentists and introduced into the 1-year curriculum. The first programme was a 1.5-hr lecture with a self-oral assessment training in May 2018, and the second was a 1-hr oral assessment training in October 2018. The questionnaire surveys investigating nursing students' attitudes, confidence, and self-performance regarding oral assessment and the tests measuring their oral assessment abilities were conducted before and after the programmes. The total scores on the tests were 0-9 points.

A total of 101 (90.2%) nursing students responded to all the questionnaires and tests. Their attitudes and confidence regarding oral assessment were significantly improved after the programmes. The total average scores on the tests were significantly increased from 6.8 points at baseline to 7.9 points after the programmes. The percentage of their performance of self-oral assessment every day significantly increased from 15.8% at baseline to 32.7% after the programmes.

These results suggested that the educational programme might be effective in improving not only the students' attitudes and confidence regarding oral assessment but also their oral assessment abilities and self-oral assessment performance. Therefore, future programmes must focus on training them to improve oral health care referrals.