Evaluating a Forum-Style Simulation for Enhancing Interprofessional Attitudes on Collaboration Among Health Profession Students
TL;DR
Evaluating the impact of classroom-based, forum-style ISBE on university students’ attitudes toward collaboration found it can be an effective classroom tool for improving collaboration and communication among nursing, dietetics and SLP students and may strengthen future working relationships among healthcare professionals.
Abstract
Context: The Institute of Medicine identified poor communication and collaboration as barriers to high-quality patient care and recommended incorporating interprofessional education into training. One approach is forum-style interprofessional simulation-based education (ISBE), an interactive, improvisational technique that encourages reflection. Objectives: This project aimed to evaluate the impact of classroom-based, forum-style ISBE on university students’ attitudes toward collaboration. Evidence Acquisition: Participants (n = 38) from nursing, dietetics, and speech-language pathology (SLP) programs completed the Jefferson Scale of Attitudes Toward Interprofessional Collaboration (JeffSATIC) before and after the simulation. A Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to compare the JeffSATIC pretest and posttest scores. Results: The median JeffSATIC posttest score of 120 was significantly higher than the pretest median score of 112 following the forum-style ISBE (W = 177, P = 0.008, rrb = 0.498). Conclusions: Forum-style ISBE can be an effective classroom tool for improving collaboration and communication among nursing, dietetics, and SLP students and may strengthen future working relationships among healthcare professionals.