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Educating health care professionals for working in interprofessional teams is a key preparation for roles in modern healthcare. Interprofessional teams require members who are competent in their roles. Self-assessment instruments measuring interprofessional competence (IPC) are widely used in educational preparation, but their ability to accurately and reliably measure competence is unknown. We conducted a systematic review to identify variations in the characteristics and use of self-report instruments measuring IPC. Following a systematic search of electronic databases and after applying eligibility criteria, 38 articles were included that describe 8 IPC self-report instruments. A large variation was found in the extent of coverage of IPC core competencies as articulated by the Interprofessional Education Collaborative. Each instrument's strength of evidence, psychometric performance and uses varied. Rather than measuring competency as "behaviours", they measured indirect proxies for competence, such as attitudes towards core interprofessional competencies. Educators and researchers should identify the most appropriate and highest-performing IPC instruments according to the context in which they will be used.Systematic review registration: Open Science Framework (https://archive.org/details/osf-registrations-vrfjn-v1).

BACKGROUND: Health practitioners from different professions, and with differing competencies, need to collaborate to provide quality care. Competencies in interprofessional working need developing in undergraduate educational preparation. This paper reports the protocol for a systematic review of self-report instruments to assess interprofessional learning in undergraduate health professionals' education.

METHODS: We will search PubMed, Web of Science, CINAHL and ERIC from January 2010 onwards. A combination of search terms for interprofessional learning, health professions, psychometric properties, assessment of learning and assessment tools will be used. Two reviewers will independently screen all titles, abstracts and full-texts. Potential conflicts will be resolved through discussion. Quantitative and mixed-methods studies evaluating interprofessional learning in undergraduate health professions education (e.g. medicine, nursing, occupational and physical therapy, pharmacy and psychology) will be included. Methodological quality of each reported instrument, underpinning theoretical frameworks, and the effects of reported interventions will be assessed. The overall outcome will be the effectiveness of instruments used to assess interprofessional competence. Primary outcomes will be the psychometric properties (e.g. reliability, discriminant and internal validity) of instruments used. Secondary outcomes will include time from intervention to assessment, how items relate to specific performance/competencies (or general abstract constructs) and how scores are used (e.g. to grade students, to improve courses or research purposes). Quantitative summaries in tabular format and a narrative synthesis will allow recommendations to be made on the use of self-report instruments in practice.

DISCUSSION: Many studies use self-report questionnaires as tools for developing meaningful interprofessional education activities and assessing students' interprofessional competence. This systematic review will evaluate both the benefits and limitations of reported instruments and help educators and researchers (i) choose the most appropriate existing self-report instruments to assess interprofessional competence and (ii) inform the design and conduct of interprofessional competency assessment using self-report instruments.

SYSTEMATIC REVIEW REGISTRATION: Open Science Framework [https://osf.io/vrfjn].

Background: Professional competence and continuous professional development is essential for ensuring high quality and safe nursing care, and it might be important for motivating nurses to stay in the profession. Thus, there is a need to identify the developmental process of nursing competency. Assessment of competence and need for further training helps to identify areas for quality improvement, and to design interventions in order to facilitate continuous competence development in different work contexts. The current study aimed to 1) describe registered nurses' self-assessment of clinical competence as well as the need for further training, and 2) explore possible differences between registered nurses with varying lengths of professional experience as a nurse (≤ 0,5 year, > 0,5-5 years, and ≥ 6 years).

Methods: A cross-sectional survey design was applied, using the Professional Nurse Self-Assessment Scale of clinical core competencies II. Registered nurses (n = 266) working in medical and surgical contexts in hospitals in Sweden responded (response rate 51%). Independent student t-test and analysis of variance were carried out.

Results: Registered nurses assessed their competence highest in statements related to cooperation with other health professionals; taking full responsibility for own activities; and acting ethically when caring for patients. They assessed their need for further training most for statements related to assessing patients' health needs by telephone; giving health promotion advice and recommendations to patients by telephone; as well as improving a creative learning environment for staff at the workplace. For self-assessed competence and need for further training, differences between the groups for 35 and 46 items respectively, out of 50 were statistically significant.

Conclusions: Although the registered nurses assessed their competence high for important competence components expected of professionals such as cooperation with other healthcare professionals, it is problematic that knowledge of interactions and side-effects of different types of medication were reported as having the highest need of training. Longitudinal follow up of newly graduated nurses regarding their continuous development of competence as well as further training is needed.

PURPOSE: Information is scarce on healthcare managers' understanding of simulation educators' impact on clinical work. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore healthcare managers' perceptions of the significance of clinically active simulation educators for the organisation.

DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: Healthcare managers were invited to be interviewed in a semi-structured manner. Inductive thematic analysis was used to identify and analyse patterns of notions describing the managers' perceptions of simulation educators' impact as co-workers on their healthcare organisations.

FINDINGS: The identified relevant themes for the healthcare unit were: (1) value for the manager, (2) value for the community and (3) boundaries. Simulation educators were perceived to be valuable gatekeepers of evidence-based knowledge and partners in leadership for educational issues. Their most prominent value for the community was establishing a reflective climate, facilitating open communication and thereby improving the efficacy of teamwork. Local tradition, economy, logistics and staffing of the unit during simulation training were suggested to have possible negative impacts on simulation educators' work.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: The findings might have implications for the implementation and support of simulation training programs.

SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS: Healthcare managers appreciated both the personal value of simulation educators and the effect of their work for their own unit. Local values were prioritised versus global. Simulation training was valued as an educational tool for continual professional development, although during the interviews, the managers did not indicate the importance of employment of pedagogically competent and experienced staff.

ORIGINALITY/VALUE: The study provided new insights about how simulation educators as team members affect clinical practice.

INTRODUCTION: Trained simulation educators (SEs) usually work both at simulation centers and in everyday health care, and thus, they possess dual expertise. Experienced SEs are known to grow confident with their expanding experience, but evidence is scarce about how this affects their development as clinical professionals. The aim of this study was to explore how experienced SEs describe their role within the context of everyday health care.

METHODS: An explorative descriptive study including 14 semistructured interviews and 27 questionnaires was conducted with 41 experienced SEs. An inductive thematic analysis was used to identify and analyze patterns describing SEs' perceptions of the influence of their educational work on everyday health care.

RESULTS: The SEs' descriptions of their encounters during everyday clinical work, which were affected by the fact that they had experience of facilitating simulation training, were gathered into three main themes with three of their own subthemes: education (educational needs, routines/guidelines, and being a resource), nontechnical skills (communication, feedback, and leadership/coworkership), and clinical proficiency (situational insight, role model, and confidence in clinical practice). The insights gained and actions taken as clinical professionals are all intended to be implemented with the ultimate aim of safe patient care.

DISCUSSION: All the aspects of the SEs' work are perceived to be successfully translated into clinical practice and can be summarized by the main themes of education, nontechnical skills, and clinical proficiency as delineated by this study. These themes are demonstrated at the individual, team, and organizational levels through increased competence and confidence.This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License 4.0 (CCBY-NC-ND), where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially without permission from the journal.

Aim: The aim of this study was to describe how patients with chronic back pain experience encounters with health care. Persons with chronic back pain are a stigmatized group often treated based on stereotypes, which may lead to misunderstandings and create frustrated patients and healthcare personnel. Few studies have examined the generic aspects of quality of care in this context.

Design: A descriptive design with a qualitative approach was used.

Methods: Nine individual interviews were conducted with chronic back pain patients after admission to an orthopaedic hospital ward. Data were analysed using content analysis.

Results: The patients’ experiences of healthcare encounters can be described by the theme “Struggling to be seen and understood as a person,” comprising the categories “Lack of access and trust to care",“A desire to be taken care of and listened to” and “Own strength to handle healthcare situations.”

BACKGROUND: The transition from life-prolonging to palliative care (PC) can be challenging often characterized by psychical, physiological, social and existential changes. Knowledge of how to support the patient and family in this specific care phase is lacking, and this area needs to be further explored. The aim of this study was to investigate strategies that registered nurses (RNs) use to ease the transition from life-prolonging care to PC for patients with incurable disease.

METHODS: The study has a descriptive design. Fourteen RNs working in a specialized PC unit were interviewed. The data were analysed using content analysis.

RESULTS: The RNs' strategies can be described under the categories "Getting to know the patient and creating a relationship", "Providing support", "Adapting to individuals' needs" and "Enabling conversations".

CONCLUSION: The findings show that the RNs in this population used strategies that not only took time but also required knowledge about the transition process and required the ability to identify and meet patients' and families' unique needs. Patients' difficult and exposed situation needs to be addressed through a structured follow-up after informing about the change from life-prolonging care to PC. RNs have a unique role of supporting both the patient and the family in the transition from life-prolonging care to PC for patients with incurable disease.

Introduction: Patients with high body mass index (BMI), pre-existing pain and young age and women seem to experience more postoperative pain. Few studies have, however, addressed these risk factors amongst obese patients undergoing bariatric surgery. The aim of the present study was to evaluate risk factors for postoperative pain following laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery.

Methods: In this cohort study, we used data from the PAIN OUT register for postoperative pain during the first 24 h after surgery. Primary outcome measure was severity of pain after surgery. Multivariate analyses were conducted to evaluate BMI, young age, gender and pre-existing pain as independent risk factors for postoperative pain.

Results: We included 192 patients in this study. Younger age (B -0.08, 95%CI -0.11 to -0.05/year; p < 0.001), female gender (B 0.92, 95%CI 0.10-1.75; p = 0.029) and pre-existing pain (B 1.06, 95%CI 0.03-2.09; p = 0.044) were all associated with an increased risk for postoperative pain. In the multivariate analyses, only young age ((adjusted OR 0.95, 95%CI 0.92-0.97/year; p < 0.001) and pre-existing pain (adjusted OR 2.56, 95%CI 1.09-6.00; p = 0.031) remained as independent risk factors for severe postoperative pain.

Conclusion: Younger age and pre-existing pain are associated with severe postoperative pain during the first 24 h after laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery, whereas female gender and high BMI are not.

Patients may suffer from a wide range of postoperative symptoms after coronary artery bypass grafting. In-depth knowledge of the recovery process is a prerequisite for nursing interventions. However, we found no specific instrument covering the entire range and duration of postoperative symptoms related to this procedure. We therefore modified and extended the 19 items, generic Postoperative Recovery Profile questionnaire for the specific evaluation of the recovery after coronary artery bypass grafting. We here report on the development process of the new questionnaire. Procedure-specific symptoms were identified by a literature review and by experts. The content validity was assessed by healthcare professionals (n = 15), inpatients (n = 12) and outpatients (n = 4). A test run was done with inpatients (n = 10), which was followed by a test-retest reliability evaluation with inpatients (n = 24). We identified 15 new symptoms in the literature review and six in the content validity assessment. Only three of the 35 items had an acceptable content validity index, but all 35 items in the test run were reported by at least two patients. The questionnaire took 4-9 minutes to complete and was considered easy to use. The final instrument used in the reliability test included 22 new items, and 25 of the 35 items were satisfactory stable. To conclude, we developed a 35 items, procedure-specific questionnaire that was easy to use and may aid systematic assessment of the recovery after coronary artery bypass grafting.

BACKGROUND: Clinical practice is a pivotal part of nursing education. It provides students with the opportunity to put the knowledge and skills they have acquired from lectures into practice with real patients, under the guidance of registered nurses. Clinical experience is also essential for shaping the nursing students' identity as future professional nurses. There is a lack of knowledge and understanding of the ways in which students learn practical skills and apply knowledge within and across different contexts, i.e. how they apply clinical skills, learnt in the laboratory in university settings, in the clinical setting. The aim of this study was therefore to explore how nursing students describe, and use, their prior experiences related to practical skills during their clinical practice.

METHODS: An ethnographic case study design was used. Fieldwork included participant observations (82 h), informal conversations, and interviews (n = 7) that were conducted during nursing students' (n = 17) clinical practice at an emergency department at a university hospital in Sweden.

RESULTS: The overarching theme identified was "Learning about professional identities with respect to situated power". This encompasses tensions in students' learning when they are socialized into practical skills in the nursing profession. This overarching theme consists of three sub-themes: "Embodied knowledge", "Divergent ways of assessing and evaluating knowledge" and "Balancing approaches".

CONCLUSIONS: Nursing students do not automatically possess the ability to transfer knowledge from one setting to another; rather, their development is shaped by their experiences and interactions with others when they meet real patients. The study revealed different ways in which students navigated tensions related to power differentials. Reflecting on actions is a prerequisite for developing and learning practical skills and professional identities. This highlights the importance of both educators' and the preceptors' roles for socializing students in this process.