Teaching interprofessional teamwork in medical and nursing education in Norway: A content analysis

Abstract

The notions of interprofessional education and interprofessional teamwork have attained widespread acceptance, partly because lack of teamwork has been tentatively linked to adverse incidents in healthcare. By analyzing data from 32 educational institutions, this study identifies the status of interprofessional teamwork in all nursing and medical education in Norway. The study programs issued by the 32 educational institutions were subject to content analysis, distilling the ambitions and goals for teaching interprofessional teamwork. Study program coordinators were approached and asked to what degree interprofessional teamwork was actually introduced in lecturing and clinical training. Results indicate that the medical and nursing schools clearly aspire to teach interprofessional teamwork and that this has largely been achieved when it comes to theoretical teaching. Although three of the four medical programs have integrated interprofessional teamwork into their clinical training, there is a gap in the nursing programs where introduction of interprofessional teamwork in clinical training has been limited. Current challenges are related to organizational issues (e.g. lack of institutional collaboration), practical difficulties (e.g. finding time to bring students of various professions together) and possibly managerial issues (e.g. lack of strategic perspective and change management).

Keywords::

• Interprofessional teamwork
• interprofessional education
• curricula
• content analysis
• medical and nursing education

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the study coordinators at all healthcare educational institutions in Norway for their helpful response and participation in the study.

Declaration of interest

This study was accomplished with financial support from The Laerdal Foundation for Acute Medicine under the support number 1007. The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the writing and content of the paper.