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Interprofessional learning involving medical students or doctors
Author(s) -
Mattick K,
Bligh J
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
medical education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.776
H-Index - 138
eISSN - 1365-2923
pISSN - 0308-0110
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2923.2003.01681.x
Subject(s) - interprofessional education , medical education , health care , teamwork , psychology , medline , data collection , medicine , intervention (counseling) , quality (philosophy) , nursing , statistics , mathematics , political science , law , economics , economic growth , philosophy , epistemology
Aims There is a belief that interprofessional learning among health care professionals promotes teamwork and collaboration, leading to improved patient care, but supporting data have not been available. Our aim was to identify recent studies on interprofessional learning involving medical students or doctors. Methods The medical education literature was searched for relevant publications since 1998 and the studies were subsequently classified according to various criteria. Results A total of 24 ‘research papers’ and 36 ‘literature review/editorial‐type papers’ were identified. Research papers generally described interprofessional learning initiatives and evaluated their success in terms of knowledge or attitudes by data collection. Seven collected qualitative data, 4 collected quantitative data and 11 collected both. None of the studies identified conformed to the Cochrane Collaboration guidelines for a rigorous source of quantitative information on an intervention's effectiveness. Discussion The authors suspect that significantly more studies have been performed than those published. This may indicate research of variable quality, leading to a large proportion of papers being rejected for publication. More and better quality research is required as more resources become available to academic and health care organisations for interprofessional learning.