Nursing Program Outcome Improves with Interprofessional Simulation

Simulation-based education in nursing education has been shown to be as effective as experiences in the actual clinical environment; however, little evidence exists on the assessment of simulation in multidisciplinary teams to assess program outcomes. The purpose of this research study was to investigate nursing program outcome data specific to interprofessional collaboration in a simulation experience involving nursing and physical therapy (PT) compared to data from this same simulation experience involving nursing only.

Senior nursing students from two different cohorts, cohort A (n=58) and cohort B (n=47), and 14 PT students participated as learners in the simulation investigated in this research study. Three to 4 nursing students and 1 PT student were randomly placed into an interprofessional team to care for two patients. Nursing students were evaluated on program outcome competencies by nursing educators.

The Mann Whitney U-test indicated a significant difference in performance scores for the program outcome specific to interprofessional collaboration between nursing students in cohort A (+PT) and nursing students in cohort B (-PT), p<0.05.

The results of this study demonstrate that two professions are more effective when they work together as a team because they have multiple perspectives from which to collect information.