Journal of allied health
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Journal of allied health · Jan 2012
Evaluating students' perceptions of an interprofessional problem-based pilot learning project.
Interprofessional teams provide the promise of effective, comprehensive and reliable care. Interprofessional education (IPE) promotes students' knowledge and attitudes to support interprofessional teamwork, and problem-based learning formats enable students to gain valuable teamwork experience. ⋯ Students' attitudes toward interprofessional teamwork improved from baseline to post-intervention. Mean differences were significant using paired t-tests on confidence in professional role (p <0.001), communication (p = 0.02), understanding roles of others (p = 0.002), identification with the team (p = 0.002), comfort with members (p = 0.047), cooperation with team members (p = 0.004), team perceptions (p = 0.04), decision-making (p <0.001), team efficiency (p <0.001), minimal conflict (p = 0.04), and group contributions (p = 0.03). Focus group themes indicated students were satisfied with the module, perceived increased knowledge about roles and perspectives, greater confidence to collaborate, and increased motivation to engage in intra-curricular IPE. The timing of their exposure within their respective educational programs was identified as important.
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Journal of allied health · Jan 2012
Changes in student attitudes toward interprofessional learning and collaboration arising from a case-based educational experience.
Working effectively with other disciplines is an important and necessary skill for healthcare practitioners. Academic institutions can provide educational experiences that can begin to foster the prerequisite competencies needed to collaborate successfully with other healthcare professionals. The purpose of this study was to examine changes in attitudes toward learning from and collaborating with other healthcare students and professionals arising from an interprofessional educational (IPE) experience. ⋯ Statistically significant increases in post-IPE scores on the IEPS, RIPLS, and ATHCTS were found, indicating positive changes in attitudes toward learning from and collaborating with graduate students and other healthcare professionals. A well-structured educational experience, consisting of 6 hours of interprofessional interaction, can change student attitudes toward learning from and collaborating with peers in other healthcare disciplines prior to graduation and professional licensure. The current study provides evidence that a relatively short educational intervention implemented prior to graduation can positively change attitudes toward learning and collaboration.
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Journal of allied health · Jan 2012
The Caring Professionals Program: educational approaches that integrate caring attitudes and empathic behaviors into health professions education.
Caring attitudes and empathic behaviors are considered by most Americans to be an essential and intrinsic element of appropriate health care, yet little attention is given to this in the curricula of most healthcare professional training programs. This paper describes an ongoing educational intervention to develop healthcare professionals with caring attitudes and empathic behaviors that will be sustained in their professional practice environments. The Caring Professionals Program was designed to enhance and redesign existing learning experiences in four academic programs: physical therapy, occupational therapy, physician assistant, and nurse practitioner. ⋯ Six educational elements were employed in the Caring Professionals Program: experience, reflection, problem-solving, didactic, active participation, and role modeling. Educational interventions were designed to be appropriate to the students' temporal progress through their programs, specifically the early, middle or late stages. The Caring Professionals Program may serve as a model for other allied health schools and also contribute to a college culture that supports caring and humanism.
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Journal of allied health · Jan 2012
Correlates of safety outcomes during patient ambulance transport: a partial test of the Haddon matrix.
The Haddon Matrix has been cited in a recent review of patient safety as a useful framework for understanding Emergency Medical Services (EMS) provider and patient injury prevention and safety during ambulance response and transport. The research goal of this study was to test part of the Haddon matrix, specifically variables within the pre-event host and event host cells, for explaining three multi-item ambulance-related safety outcomes: i.e., anticipated use of safety equipment, securing the patient, and securing the equipment. Complete study data were available for 648 EMS professionals who responded to the 2004 Longitudinal Emergency Medical Technician Attributes and Demographic Study (LEADS) survey. ⋯ Specific findings indicated that EMS professionals with: lower perceived health, greater intrinsic satisfaction, more time in the patient compartment of an ambulance, and greater seatbelt use had higher anticipated use of ambulance safety equipment. For the patient being secured in an ambulance, the extremely high mean/low score variance resulted in only extrinsic satisfaction having a significant positive association. Finally, female EMS professionals, those more extrinsically satisfied, not being involved in a prior ambulance accident, and greater seatbelt use were related to higher frequency of securing ambulance equipment during patient transport.