Background: Patient involvement in interprofessional education (IPE) is a new approach in fostering person-centeredness and collaborative competencies in undergraduate students. We developed the Patient As a Person (PAP-)module to facilitate students in learning from experts by experience (EBEs) living with chronic conditions, in an interprofessional setting. This study aimed to explore the experiences of undergraduate students, EBEs and facilitators with the PAP-module and formulate recommendations on the design and organization of patient involvement in IPE. Methods: We collected data from students, EBEs and facilitators, through eight semi-structured focus group interviews and two individual interviews (N = 51). The interviews took place at Maastricht University, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences and Regional Training Center Leeuwenborgh. Conventional content analysis revealed key themes. Results: Students reported that learning from EBEs in an interprofessional setting yielded a more comprehensive approach and made them empathize with EBEs. Facilitators found it challenging to address multiple demands from students from different backgrounds and diverse EBEs. EBEs were motivated to improve the personcentredness of health care and welcomed a renewed sense of purpose. Conclusions: This study yielded six recommendations: (a) students from various disciplines visit an EBE to foster a comprehensive approach, (b) groups of at least two students visit EBEs, (c) students may need aftercare for which facilitators should be receptive, (d) EBEs need clear instruction on their roles, (e) multiple EBEs in one session create diversity in perspectives and (f) training programmes and peer-to-peer sessions for facilitators help them to interact with diverse students and EBEs.
Background Interprofessional education is promoted as a means of enhancing future collaborative practice in healthcare. We developed a learning activity in which undergraduate medical, nursing and allied healthcare students practice interprofessional collaboration during a student-led interprofessional team meeting. Design and delivery During their clinical rotation at a family physician’s practice, each medical student visits a frail elderly patient and prepares a care plan for the patient. At a student-led interprofessional team meeting, medical, nursing and allied healthcare students jointly review these care plans. Subsequently, participating students reflect on their interprofessional collaboration during the team meeting, both collectively and individually. Every 4 weeks, six interprofessional team meetings take place. Each team comprises 9–10 students from various healthcare professions, and meets once. To date an average of 360 medical and 360 nursing and allied healthcare students have participated in this course annually. Evaluation Students mostly reported positive experiences, including the opportunity to learn with, from and about other healthcare professions in the course of jointly reviewing care plans, and feeling collectively responsible for the care of the patients involved. Additionally, students reported a better understanding of the contextual factors at hand. The variety of patient cases, diversity of participating health professions, and the course material need improvement. Conclusion Students from participating institutions confirmed that attending a student-led interprofessional team meeting had enabled them to learn with, from and about other health professions in an active role. The use of real-life cases and the educational design contributed to the positive outcome of this interprofessional learning activity.
The primary reason for the development of physician assistant (PA) educational programs in the Netherlands was the discrepancy between supply and demand for health care providers. The need for health care workers was increasing while the supply of (para)medical and nursing practitioners stagnated. Although medical schools have expanded the numbers of students they are training, it is still not enough to overcome the problem of a shortage of physicians
