Students’ approaches to learning in clinical interprofessional context

Figures & data

Table

Practice points

When investigating health care students’ learning orientations, three clusters were found: a ‘collaborative-constructivist’ group, a ‘low collaborative group’ and a ‘cookbook’ group. Students with the ‘low collaborative’ orientation were less satisfied with interprofessional clinical training than the other groups. Male medical students were the least interested in cooperation compared to the nursing, occupational therapy and physiotherapy students. Regardless of learning orientation, almost all students highly valued the interprofessional training in clinical practice. Students with a cookbook approach showed an increased understanding of interprofessional collaborative work

Table 1.  The CLKQ categorized according to students’ preferred approach to learning, i.e. Practical value, Certain knowledge and Collaborative-Constructivist, for all students and for each educational program

	Practical value (mean)	Certain knowledge (mean)	Collaborative- Constructivist (mean)
All students (n = 283)	4.0	3.3	5.2
Medical students (n = 60)	3.9	3.2	5.0 (a,b)
Nursing students (n = 151)	4.0	3.5 (c)	5.2 (a)
OT students (n = 33)	4.0	2.9 (c)	5.4 (b,d)
PT students (n = 39)	4.0	3.1	4.9 (d)
Female students (n = 238)	4.0	3.3	5.2 (e)
Male students (n = 43)	4.0	3.5	5.0 (e)
Female medical students (n = 39)	3.8	3.0 (f)	5.2 (f)
Male medical students (n = 20)	4.2	3.6 (f)	4.7 (f)

Notes: Significant differences in comparisons between the student groups are marked (a)–(f).

(a) Between medical and nursing students (p < 0.0125).

(b) Between medical and occupational therapy students (p < 0.001).

(c) Between nursing and occupational therapy students (p < 0.001).

(d) Between occupational therapy and physiotherapy students (p < 0.005).

(e) Between female and male students (p < 0.005).

(f) Between female and male medical students (p < 0.005).

Table 2.  CLKQ showing the distribution of the three clusters. i.e. ‘Low collaborative’, ‘Collaborative Constructivist’ and ‘Cookbook’ for all students and separately by educational group and gender

	Cluster groups
	Low collaborative	Collaborative- Constructivist	Cookbook
	n	n	n
All students	80	106	97
Medical students	22	22	16
Nursing students	31	55	65
OT students	8	18	7
- PT students	19	11	9
Gender	n	n	n
Females^a	66	91	81
Males^a	14	14	15
Students’ approach to learning according to CLKQ	Mean	Mean	Mean
Practical value	4.3	3.4*	4.4
Certain knowledge	3.0*	2.7*	4.2*
Collaborative-Constructivist	4.8*	5.5*	5.1*

Notes: Characteristics of each cluster according to the CLKQ are shown as mean values. The differences in CLKQ values between the groups are significant (p < 0.005) except for the Low Collaborative and Cookbook groups regarding the sub-scale Practical Value. ^aTwo students did not state their gender in the questionnaire.An asterisk (*) indicates significant difference compared to the other two groups.

Table 3.  Comparison between the cluster groups before and after the IPE course regarding their understanding of their own profession (no difference between the clusters but significant increase within each clusters, p < 0.005), and their knowledge about each others’ professions (no difference between the clusters but significant increase within each cluster, p < 0.005)

	Before the course			After the course
	Cluster groups			Cluster groups
	Low collaborative (mean)	Collaborative- Constructivist (mean)	Cookbook (mean)	Low collaborative (mean)	Collaborative- Constructivist (mean)	Cookbook (mean)
Understanding of own profession	6.8	6.4	6.5	7.9	7.9	7.9
Knowledge about other professions	6.2	6.0	6.1	7.3	7.3	7.2

Table 4.  Comparison between the cluster groups regarding their opinion regarding the goals of the course and the students’ attitudes towards the IPE concept before and after the course ()

	Before the course			After the course
	Cluster groups			Cluster groups
	Low collaborative (mean)	Collaborative- Constructivist (mean)	Cookbook (mean)	Low collaborative (mean)	Collaborative- Constructivist (mean)	Cookbook (mean)
Work load
‘Are/were the goals realistic in relation to the course length?’	5.9	6.0*	5.7*	6.5	6.6*	6.3*
Attitudes
Overall opinion of the course	6.3	7.1*	6.9*	7.1	7.8*	7.6*
Value for future health care
‘Do the goals represent today's healthcare?’	5.4^a	5.8	6.2^a	5.7	5.5^b	6.3^b
‘Should the goals pervade healthcare training to a greater extent?’	6.6^c	7.5^c,d	6.7*^d	7.0^e,f	7.8^e	7.6*^f
‘Should the goals be applied to future healthcare?’	7.3^g	8.0^g	7.7*	7.7^h	8.2^h	8.1*

Notes: (a)–(i) Significant difference between these groups (p < 0.005).

*marks significant differences (p < 0.005) between the cluster groups before and after the course.