Interprofessional student groups using patient documentation to facilitate interprofessional collaboration in...

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Education
• Interprofessional Collaboration
• Clinical Placements

Background:

• Explores how students learn interprofessional collaboration in clinical settings.
• Addresses the interest of health services, education stakeholders, and interprofessional education research.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigates how patient documentation facilitates collaboration within interprofessional student groups.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative research with an ethnographic design.
• Study conducted at a Norwegian university focusing on interprofessional education.
• Involved three student groups (medicine, nursing, occupational therapy, physiotherapy) in a two-week geriatric rehabilitation placement.
• Data collected via observations, informal conversations, field notes, and audio recordings; analysis used practice theory.

Main Results:

• Students effectively used narrative notes in electronic patient records for care overview and continuity.
• The narrative notes facilitated a comprehensive understanding of patients' clinical situations and care needs.
• Collaborative review, revision, and refinement of notes led to multidimensional patient representations and insights into intervention responses.

Conclusions:

• Patient documentation can stimulate interprofessional collaboration when students have autonomy in organizing care.
• Students' inherent meaning-seeking capabilities are a valuable, underutilized resource in interprofessional education.