Carrie Tran

Background: Collaboration with other professions is essential in health care education to prepare students for future clinical teamwork. However, health care education still struggles to incorporate interprofessional education. Distance learning and virtual patients (VPs) may be useful additional methods to increase students’ possibilities for interprofessional learning. Objective: This study had two aims. The first was to assess if an interprofessional VP case could facilitate medical students’ learning about team collaboration in online groups. The second was to assess how students experienced learning with the VP when remotely connected with their group. Methods: A mixed methods design was used. The VP case was a 73-year-old man who needed help from different health professions in his home after a hip fracture. Questionnaires were answered by the students before and directly after each session. Qualitative group interviews were performed with each group of students directly after the VP sessions, and the interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Results: A total of 49 third-year medical students divided into 15 groups participated in the study. Each group had 2 to 5 students who worked together with the interprofessional VP without a teacher’s guidance. In the analysis of the group interviews, a single theme was identified: the interprofessional VP promoted student interaction and gave insight into team collaboration. Two categories were found: (1) the structure of the VP facilitated students’ learning and (2) students perceived the collaboration in their remotely connected groups as functioning well and being effective. The results from the questionnaires showed that the students had gained insights into the roles and competencies of other health care professions. Conclusions: This study demonstrates that an interprofessional VP enabled insights into team collaboration and increased understanding of other professions among student groups comprising only medical students. The interprofessional VP seemed to benefit students’ learning in an online, remote-learning context. Although our VP was not used as an interprofessional student activity according to the common definition of interprofessional education, the results imply that it still contributed to students’ interprofessional learning.

BACKGROUND Collaboration with other professions is essential in healthcare education in order to prepare students for future clinical teamwork. However, healthcare education still struggles to incorporate interprofessional education in the curricula. Distance learning and virtual patients (VPs) may be useful additional methods to increase students’ possibilities for interprofessional learning. OBJECTIVE The present study had two aims. The first was to assess if an interprofessional VP case can facilitate medical students` learning about team collaboration in online groups. The second was to assess how students experienced learning with the VP when remotely connected with their group. METHODS This was a mixed methods design. The VP case concerned a 73-year-old man who needed help from different health professions in his home after a hip fracture. Questionnaires were answered by the students before and directly after each session. Qualitative group interviews were performed with each group of students directly after the VP sessions, and the interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. RESULTS A total of 49 medical students in semester five participated in the study, and these were divided into 15 groups with two to five students in each group who worked together with the interprofessional VP without the teacher’s guidance. In the analysis of the group interviews, we identified one theme – The interprofessional VP promoted student interaction and gave insight into team collaboration. Two categories were found: 1) The structure in the VP facilitated students´ learning and 2) Students perceived the collaboration in their remotely connected group as well-functioning and effective. The results from the questionnaires showed that the students had gained insights into the roles and competencies of other health care professions. CONCLUSIONS This study demonstrates that the interprofessional VP gave insights into team collaboration and increased the understanding of other professions among student groups comprised only of one profession. The interprofessional VP seemed to benefit students´ learning in an online remote learning context. Though our VP was not used as an interprofessional student activity according to the common definition of interprofessional education, the results imply that it still contributed to students´ interprofessional learning.

Interprofessional education is important for increasing the quality of patient care, but organising it in primary healthcare is still challenging. The aim of this study was to develop and assess a virtual patient model for primary healthcare and to investigate students' perceptions of learning with this interprofessional virtual patient model. The virtual patient case described a patient with several medical conditions who had returned home after surgery. The virtual patient included text files, short videos, and links to illustrate different health professions' roles in home care. Ten interprofessional groups with 39 students assessed the virtual patient from four different study programmes: nursing, physiotherapy, medicine, and occupational therapy. The students answered a questionnaire about how they perceived the usability of the virtual patient and participated in group interviews. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyse the data from the semi-structured group interviews. The analysis of the interviews resulted in four main categories: The virtual patient model facilitated the learning process; It was beneficial to have students from different programmes in the group when working with the virtual patient; Working with the virtual patient helped the students to understand the roles and competencies of their own and other professions and All professions are needed in clinical work in order to help the patient. The students perceived that the mixture of text and multimedia made the virtual patient seem authentic and stimulated their group discussions, which they valued most. The students gave generally high points for usability in the questionnaire, but they also gave input for improvement of the program in their comments. The interprofessional virtual patient model facilitated interactions and discussions between students and may be a useful complement for interprofessional education in clinical contexts and might be a suitable tool in preparing students for future teamwork.

Primary healthcare in Sweden and worldwide has a diverse structure with many kinds of healthcare units involved. This is a challenge for collaboration between different professions in primary healthcare, as the different healthcare professions often work in silos. Interprofessional education (IPE) in the context of primary healthcare is less studied than IPE at hospitals and most of the studies in primary healthcare have focused on collaboration between general practitioners and nurses. The aim of this study was to describe how healthcare students perceived conditions for IPE in primary healthcare. Qualitative group interviews were used and a total of 26 students, recruited on a voluntary basis participated in four group interviews with students mixed from study programmes in nursing, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and medicine. Students from the study programme in medicine were in their second to eleventh semesters of 11 semesters in total, whilst students from the occupational therapist, physiotherapist and nursing programmes were in their fourth to sixth of six semesters in total. Our findings indicated one theme: Students perceived a need for support and awareness of IPE from both study programmes and clinical placements. Five categories were found to belong to the theme. Students’ tunnel-vision focus on their own profession may have affected their ability to collaborate with students from other professions. The nature of the patients’ healthcare problems decided if they were perceived as suitable for IPE. Clinical supervisors’ support for and attitude towards IPE were important. The hierarchy between different professions was perceived as a hindrance for seeking help from the other professions. The students asked for more collaboration between different study programmes, in order to gain knowledge about the roles and responsibilities of the other professions. In conclusion, students in this study considered it essential for different study programmes and clinical placements to be more aware of the opportunities for and importance of IPE. The study identified conditions that were required for IPE in primary healthcare that may be helpful for healthcare teachers and clinical supervisors to better understand how students perceive IPE in primary healthcare, thus facilitating the planning of IPE.