Student attitudes towards the goals of an inter-professional training ward

Abstract

For some years, a 14-day practice period in an inter-professional, integrated training ward has been a compulsory element for students in six programmes at the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) in Linkoping, Sweden.The main purposes of the training are to enable students to collaborate in teams and to understand the competences and skills of the other students, to recognize the needs of the patients and to practise and develop their own professional role. A process evaluation of the first year of this training ward focused on students' attitudes towards the goals of the integrated learning activity.Results show that students from all programmes, generally speaking, entered the training with high expectations and that these expectations changed very little, i.e.their expectations were satisfied.The ability to 'understand other competences and skills' had an impact as a result of the training and was the only goal showing a measurable change in a positive direction. As regards programmes, the student nurses were the most positive group. It seems that students representing caring professions, who will cooperate closely in the future, have the highest expectations of teamwork and development of their own professional role and that these expectations are satisfied. Students from medicine and the paramedical programmes were less positive regarding the goal of developing their own professional role. A possible goal conflict between teamwork and practising one's own professional role is discussed.