To Örebro University

One way to offer students pursuing health and social care programmes realistic experiences of teamwork is interprofessional training wards where students from different educational programmes learn teamwork by working together. In the present study, a training ward in municipal care for older people was evaluated. Students from occupational therapy, nursing and social work programmes worked together on the ward for 3 weeks to learn with, from and about each other. The aim of the study was to compare students' attitudes towards practice on a training ward before and after and to evaluate goal fulfilment after 3 weeks' interprofessional education on a training ward. An attitude questionnaire was distributed to all students before and after their time on the ward, supplemented with a retrospective goal-fulfilment questionnaire afterwards. The results show that the collaborative, social experience the training ward offers was appreciated by the students and in most respects, met the learning goals set up for the course. The most important learning experience was working together in a real-life setting. However, there are some issues to take into consideration when planning and developing training wards. The setting needs to be realistic and relevant in relation to future roles for all of the student groups involved. The value and purpose of engaging together in basic patient care needs to be the subject of further investigation. When it comes to fostering competent team-workers, training wards seem to be one way forward. But to fully understand the challenges and difficulties involved in planning these wards, the learning achieved must be understood in the context of the setting as a whole, in all its aspects.

Collaboration between professionals in health and social care is essential to meet the needs of the patient. The collaboration is dependent on knowledge and understanding of each other's roles. One means of improving communication and collaboration among professionals is interprofessional education. The aim of this study was to describe the variation in how students in nursing, occupational therapy and social work perceived their own and the other professions. Over a three-week period two interviews were conducted with each of 16 students who were on an interprofessional training ward for older people in a municipal setting in Sweden. A phenomenographical approach was used in the analysis of the interviews. The findings showed great variation in how the students perceived the professions, from simplistic in terms of tasks to a more complex conception in terms of knowledge, responsibility and values. Differences in the ways professions were described concerning their professional stance towards the patients were especially accentuated. The findings indicate that the students need opportunities for reflection on and scrutiny of each other's beliefs and knowledge. The influence of interprofessional education involving reflection on the different health-care professions needs to be explored in future research.

In interprofessional work the striving of the members of each profession to establish their own positive in-group identity can be a source of conflict and have a negative effect on care. To counteract this, interprofessional training wards (IPTWs) have been developed in Sweden. The aim of the present study was to investigate similarities and differences in how student nurses, student occupational therapists and student social workers perceived their own and the other two professions before and after clinical education on an IPTW. Sixteen students were interviewed before and after the training on an IPTW in municipal care for older people in Sweden. A coding scheme developed in an earlier study was used in the analysis of the interviews. The findings indicate that there are changes in the students' stereotyped views, enhancing understanding of each other's professions after three weeks' clinical education on the IPTW. In some areas, however, there are still discrepancies between the description of own profession and the others' understanding of this profession that need to be confronted. In interprofessional training during education in social and health care there needs to be a balance between on the one hand the particular professional identity, on the other the shared identity implied by membership of the health-care team focusing on a common goal.