ADVANCING INTERPROFESSIONAL PRACTICE THROUGH PRECLINICAL EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCES

As health care becomes increasingly more complex, health care providers will need to work in teams to provide evidence-based care to patients. Preclinical medical, pharmacy and nursing students often receive minimal formal training in working with allied health fields. The following are the results of a study done with nursing and pharmacy students who joined medical students in an introductory interprofessional workshop. We will present data that focuses on the students’ attitudes and perceptions and any changes that occurred after working as part of a team with students from other health professions. We will also present data on the effectiveness of different forms of teamwork using defined team roles as opposed to undefined team roles in an Objective Structured Clinical Examination exercise. Using our findings, we hope to construct future experiences for preclinical healthcare students in working cooperatively and effectively with other health professionals to improve patient care.