Learning Together, Caring Together: a small scale interprofessional intervention in Health Professions education

Interprofessional collaboration can improve healthcare processes and outcomes and can also help to overcome the worldwide shortage of healthcare professionals. In interprofessional education, students/future healthcare professionals can be trained for these skills. The broad research question for this thesis was: What is the impact, short-term and long-term, of a small-scale interprofessional education intervention on the interprofessional collaboration skills, perceptions and motivation of nursing and medical students? This research has been conducted in the context of geriatric IPE for undergraduate medical and nursing students. Five different studies were conducted. Our results indicate that a relatively simple classroom-based intervention has the potential to have short term and longer term effect on nursing and medical students in their knowledge and interprofessional skills. Social Capital Theory and Self-Determination Theory help to understand the underlying mechanisms of these effects. The knowledge from this thesis can facilitate the implementation and shaping of IPE initiatives and contributes to the evidence of IPE on different educational levels.