Journal of interprofessional care
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Fast-track hip and knee surgery focuses on optimising pain management, achieving early mobilisation and shortening the length of stay in hospital. These factors make interprofessional collaboration imperative. With the aim of further diminishing the length of stay for patients admitted to an orthopaedic ward for hip or knee replacement and with inspiration from an interprofessional training unit, a daily interprofessional meeting was introduced. ⋯ This interprofessional collaboration was tested in a case control study comparing hospital length of stay in 75 patients treated before introduction of the daily interprofessional meeting with 88 patients treated after the introduction. The result was a significant reduction in the length of stay in hospital in total hip replacement patients (from a mean of 4.1 days (SD 2.1) to 2.7 days (SD 1.4), p < 0.05) but not in knee replacement patients (from a mean of 3.7 days (SD 1.9) to 3.1 days (SD 1.6), p = 0.33). So improving interprofessional collaboration by introducing an interprofessional daily meeting may reduce the length of stay in hospital for total hip replacement patients, but further studies are needed to explore the effect in knee replacement patients.
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Health human resource and workforce planning is a global priority. Given the critical nursing shortage, and the fact that nurses are the largest group of healthcare providers, health workforce planning must focus on strategies to enhance both recruitment and retention of nurses. Understanding early socialization to career choice can provide insight into professional perceptions and expectations that have implications for recruitment, retention and interprofessional collaboration. ⋯ The findings provide insight into how nursing is perceived to be positioned in relation to medicine and how the participants struggled to locate themselves within this social hierarchy. Implications of this research highlight the need to ensure that recruitment messaging and organizational policies promote interprofessional collaboration from the onset of choosing a career in the health professions. Early professional socialization strategies during recruitment and education can enhance future collaboration between the health professions.