gms | German Medical Science

Objective: In the past two decades Interprofessional Training Wards (ITW) have been established in the health sciences curricula worldwide. Their assessment shows promising results concerning short-term student outcomes and patient satisfaction [1]. However, only a few ITW run in Germany. In order to increase the interprofessional interactions between medical and nursing students, we initiated the Nuremberger ITW (NIPSTA) in March 2018 in addition to our longitudinal curriculum in Interprofessional Education. NIPSTA is hosted inside an Interdisciplinary Ward for Gastroenterology and Abdominal Surgery and was based on the first German ITW in Heidelberg (HIPSTA) [2].

Methods: Eligible for this training are final year students of Medicine and Nursing. During this optional 4-week rotation, groups of 2 medical and 2 nursing students lead patient care under supervision in Gastroenterology or in Abdominal Surgery. So far six groups have participated. In order to assess their training, we conducted a pre- and post-survey to examine their self-reported attitudes towards communication and teamwork, interprofessional learning, interprofessional interactions and interprofessional relationships, using the University of the West of England Interprofessional Questionnaire (UWE-IP). Out of 24 participants, 10 medical and 12 nursing students completed the questionnaire.

Results: In accordance with our previous results [3] the pre-survey showed positive attitudes in all subscales apart from the interprofessional interaction scale, where both medical and nursing students stated negative attitudes. First post-survey results depict already an improvement on all 4 subscales. At the subscale interprofessional interaction statistically significant differences were observed in both groups. The median of the medical students improved by -3,5 points (Range: -19 to 10; p=0,03), while the median of the nursing students by -4,5 points (Range: -20 to 8; p=0,03). Furthermore, we observed a statistically significant improvement of the medical students’ attitudes towards communication and teamwork. The median decreased by -2,5 points (Range: -20 to 7; p=0,04). There were no statistically significant differences between the two groups.

Discussion: Despite the small size of our present sample first results show that the 4-week NIPSTA rotation of final year medical and nursing students improved their attitudes towards interprofessional practice. However, we also observed that a few participants experienced negatively some aspects of this training. The assessment of the upcoming groups and a qualitative research on the above results will shed more light onto this matter.

Take home message: The 4-week NIPSTA rotation improved the self-reported attitudes of most students of both groups towards interprofessional interaction and the attitudes of most medical students towards communication and teamwork.