Investigating conflict perceptions among health profession students in an interprofessional education activity

Abstract

Abstract Background If a goal of interprofessional education (IPE) is to facilitate a culture of collaboration among diverse professionals, then understanding the role of conflict among interprofessional education teams is necessary. Purpose The study investigated medical and nursing students’ perceptions of conflict and team satisfaction as well as individual performance to identify relationships between these variables. Method 121 medical and 44 nursing students from a Midwestern college of osteopathic medicine were randomly assigned to teams for a low-stakes, disaster triage activity and measured on their perceptions of task conflict, relationship conflict, team satisfaction, and also their performance on the triage activity. Discussion There was no statistically significant correlation between performance and any of the other three variables; however, there was a small, negative, significant correlation between relationship conflict and satisfaction, rs = −.181, p = .020, which had an effect size of R2 = .0327. Conclusion While the effect size is small, the findings raise the question of how the perception of conflict in interprofessional exposure activities might impact students’ willingness to pursue team-based approaches in their professional practice when the stakes are much higher.