Simulation Based Evaluation of Interprofessional Teamwork Collaboration and Communication

According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (2011), interprofessional education (IPE) is needed to improve patient outcomes and prepare health professionals to function in teams in the health care setting. The Interprofessional Education Consortium (IPEC) has established four domains of competencies including ethics/ values, communication, teamwork/ collaboration, and roles/ responsibilities. It is critical for NP and medical students to learn how to collaboratively provide, deliver, and evaluate patient care  in clinical practice is critical in order to develop teamwork competencies.

The purpose of this study was to examine nurse practitioner students’ and third year medical students’ experience in an event-based high fidelity patient simulation. Each team had a mixture of nurse practitioner and third year medical students to allow them the opportunity to problem solve together and appropriately diagnose and treat the patient. One minute concept papers were used to collect data on 156 de-identified student reflections on team communication, collaboration, and on their own performance. By using ATLAS-TI software, a qualitative study has been done creating core themes such as: challenge, communication, confidence, experience, frustration, knowledge, roles, understanding, skills, helpful, learn, environment, and diagnosis. Each of these themes has been linked to de-identified individual quotes from the student reflections for further analysis and comparison.

The themes identified from the qualitative analysis were compared to the Interprofessional Professional Education Consortium (IPEC) competencies to,1) understand student outcomes from one model of IPE (intradisciplinary education with interprofessional clinical practice), and 2) compare the themes from the qualitative analysis to IPEC competencies.

This study revealed that students found it most challenging identifying team roles and responsibilities and how to communicate their ideas with other teammates when faced with a patient situation. Utilization of high fidelity simulation scenarios provides students from nursing and medicine the opportunity to enhance cognitive, psychomotor, and affective skills while improving communication skills needed to provide direct care to complex patients. By having IPE as part of the nursing and medical curriculum, students can be taught the core competencies needed, as well as how to work in a team with other clinicians to provide appropriate patient care.