Comparing Interprofessional Socialization in Mixed-Discipline and Nursing Student–Only Cohorts

Abstract

A main cause of patient safety incidents are avoidable failures in communication between health professionals. In response, healthcare has entered an era of interprofessionalism in education and patient care. A challenge to substantiating the value of interprofessional education (IPE) has been a limited number of studies that assess the effectiveness of IPE interventions compared to education interventions in which professions were learning separately from one another. This research project helps fill this gap and measures the differences in student interprofessional socialization (IS) between an IPE cohort and a usual care group of one-discipline learners. The purpose was to compare IS in mixed discipline and single discipline only student cohorts and to determine if mixed-discipline students demonstrate greater improvement in IS compared to single-discipline cohorts of students. Statistically significant increases in IS were seen with all participants, in individual cohorts and in all IS subscales both with all participants and individual cohorts. No difference was observed between a cohort of nursing student only learners versus a cohort of mixed discipline students. The study demonstrates that IS can be significantly increased through well designed learning in teamwork and collaboration whether students participate with single discipline peers or mixed discipline settings.