Building interprofessional and interinstitutional bridges in health care education.

Abstract

In Germany, most health professionals are trained at different universities and training institutions outside of medical faculties. Rigid curricular and institutional training regulations make it difficult for students in health professions to network and to learn with, from and about each other. The possibilities that online learning offers for the teaching of collaborative activities in health care are still not being fully utilised. Online teaching can provide a bridge to enable learning with and about each other in diverse educational settings. Thus, online teaching to facilitate interprofessional collaborative activities and patient-centred communication appears to be a promising approach. We transformed an established interprofessional case discussion course1 into an online teaching format where medical and nursing students from two different German universities could learn together despite site-specific, curricular and current pandemic-related challenges. FINCO online (fostering interprofessional communication) was offered as a voluntary interinstitutional course. The online format comprised five synchronous teaching sessions and was taught by an interprofessional tandem, consisting of a physician and a nurse. About 20 students participated per session. Each session lasted 2 h and was concluded by a simulated telemedical visit with standardised patients (SPs). The learning objective was to jointly develop a care plan and to prepare the students for their future collaborative work and its requirements. Medical and nursing students communicated their joint care plan and could thus apply and improve their team- and patient-communication skills. Additional to the facilitator tandem, each interprofessional student dyad was supervised by another experienced nurse and clinician who gave feedback on the process and the patient-centred communication. Structured feedback on the joint performance was also provided by the SPs. The conferencing tool Zoom served as a common learning space. Evaluation results from two digital implementation rounds (n = 55) in the winter term 2020/21 suggest that FINCO online promotes all processes of interprofessional observable collaborative activities. The students successfully conducted interprofessional case discussions online. During case discussions, they were sharing and negotiating profession-specific information and perspectives, as well as developing common care goals. The students appreciated the digital use of SPs and the possibility to apply the acquired knowledge directly within an interprofessional telemedical visit. They highlighted the direct patient feedback as particularly conducive to learning. The independence of locations and the digital small-group setting in breakout rooms, which would not have been available in a traditional classroom setting, proved to be advantages of the online learning environment. The ‘room selection’ feature of the conferencing tool expanded the didactic planning options of the facilitators in order to conduct practical exercise units in small groups. Additionally, the tandem-teaching was supported by pre-defining the teaching roles ‘technical supporter’ and ‘facilitator’. This enabled the tandems to focus on the seminar process. Teachers switched between roles several times throughout the seminar. Accompanying empirical research will help to determine to which extent FINCO online can promote interprofessional collaborative activities in patient care between health professions and how it can further be improved. The project is funded by the Medical Faculty of LMU Munich.