BackgroundIn recent years, increasing emphasis has been placed on the importance of collaboration within multi-disciplinary healthcare teams, so as to facilitate holistic patient care and thus allow improved treatment outcomes. There is hence an urgent need to educate healthcare undergraduates early in their professional careers on the importance of and complexities involved in cooperating with counterparts from other allied healthcare professions. In conjunction with this, a milestone student-led conference for undergraduate students, the 9th Student Medical-Nursing Education Conference (SMEC), was organised in 2013 to provide a unique opportunity for shared learning among the entire cohort of undergraduate medical and nursing students in Singapore matriculating in that year.MethodsThis study evaluated the effectiveness of the 9th SMEC 2013 as a shared conference experience in improving the attitudes of undergraduate medical and nursing students in Singapore towards inter-professional education (IPE). A 19-point Readiness for Inter-Professional Learning Scale (RIPLS) questionnaire comprising three subscales was administered to participants both before and after the conference. 352 responses were collected, giving a response rate of 75.1 %. Results were analysed using paired-samples t-tests with statistical significance set at p = 0.05.ResultsImprovements in overall scores for both medical and nursing students were reported for all three RIPLS subscales. Examining the RIPLS items individually, significant improvement in scores for both medical and nursing students was obtained in all 19 items. Prior exposure to IPE activities was not a predictor of improvement in IPE attitudes.ConclusionThe authors propose that student-led jointly-organised conference experiences are effective in improving healthcare students’ attitudes towards IPE. This study provides valuable insights to facilitate the development of further IPE programs to allow for the rapid and effective promotion of cooperation and collaboration between students across various healthcare disciplines.

1 provide a useful overview of issues surrounding latent tuberculosis infection. However, newly published data regarding the performance of the T-SPOT.TB assay call into question the supposition that false conversions and reversions are more common with interferon-γ release assays (IGRAs) than with tuberculin skin tests. 2 Specifically, 19,630 serial pairs of more than 16,000 health care workers in 19 U.S. hospitals were evaluated. The mean conversion rate was 0.8%, and the mean reversion rate was 17.6%. In the study by Dorman et al. 3 that the authors cite as a basis for concern regarding the operational characteristics of the IGRA, the conversion rate on tuberculin skin testing was 0.9%. Such reversion rates are usually not assessed, since most medical centers do not continue to test once a test is positive. However, reversions on tuberculin skin testing do occur 4 and were seen in approximately 20% of patients with positive results on tuberculin skin testing who were treated for latent tuberculosis. 5 Thus, the T-SPOT. TB assay would appear to be similar, if not superior, to tuberculin skin testing for the screening of health care workers.

Introduction: This study aimed to examine the impact of housemanship and cohort effect on the perceptions of what constitutes a “role model physician” between 2 cohorts of medical students. Materials & Methods: Final year medical students of the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, from the classes of 2005 (pre- and post-housemanship) and class of 2009 (pre-housemanship) responded to an anonymous 25-statement questionnaire refl ecting Fones et al’s 25-item characterisation of a “role model” doctor. Qualitative data was also collected on student’s perceived qualities of a role model doctor. Results: For the 2005 cohort pre- and post-housemanship, only 3 of the 25 items had increased in importance post-housemanship. However, when comparing the 2005 and 2009 cohorts pre-housemanship, the latter cohort placed significantly greater importance on 12 of the 25 items. Willingness to teach was identified via qualitative analysis as a new important quality of a role model doctor for medical students. Conclusion: The importance placed on characteristics of “role model” physicians were relatively unchanged by housemanship within the same cohort but increased with time between 2 cohorts 5 years apart. This suggests that professional standards of an “ideal” doctor expected and aspired to by medical students may not be eroding as feared by the medical profession and society. Key words: Exemplar, Internship, Learning, Medical education, Teaching, Views

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