A hospital experiment in teamwork among students, nurses, and administrators

The adversarial relationships existing in 1982 among medical students, nurses, and hospital staff members were recognized at Hermann Hospital, a private, nonprofit teaching hospital in Houston, Texas, to be potentially detrimental to patient care. A joint communications committee--composed of medical students, faculty members, and hospital and nursing administrators--was developed to identify ways to improve relations between medical students and hospital personnel. The results of the committee's efforts have been an orientation program offered to medical students by the hospital prior to their third-year clerkships; elective workshops for second-year students on skills such as venipuncture, ventilatory management, and physiologic monitoring taught by practicing nurses and other health care personnel; and roundtable seminars for all medical students. Three years after its inception, the committee continues to offer and refine the orientation program and skills workshops. In the authors' opinion, the success of the committee can be attributed to the fact that medical students have been instrumental in directing and evaluating the programs.