UCSF hosts Interprofessional Education Day in the fall to introduce first-year students from all four professional schools to one another in a learning activity.
The UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF School of Nursing on June 17 launched a pilot shadow program fostering direct communication between medical and nursing students, demonstrating the UCSF Strategic Plan’s commitment to innovation and collaboration.
This program is another way in which UCSF is working to realize its vision to develop innovative, collaborative approaches to education and to develop the world’s future leaders in health care delivery, research and education.
The project — sprung from the increased need for interdisciplinary education, communication and training across professional health sciences fields — paired 10 nursing students with 10 medical students to observe pre-rounding, resident and attending rounds, seminars and patient care. With an emphasis on fostering mutual understanding of all health care roles, the program anticipates future collaborative programs with students shadowing their peers in both nursing and pharmacy training programs.
“The need for interdisciplinary training is compelling,” said Kathleen Dracup, RN, FNP, DNSc, dean of the UCSF School of Nursing. “The majority of patient safety errors today are caused by problems in communication between disciplines,” she said, citing nurse-physician and physician-pharmacist interactions as examples. “On a national level, we are educating our students in silos and then expecting them to function as a team in the clinical setting.”
Learning objectives in the program for nursing students included the responsibilities, priorities and pressures of the medical student learning experience; the different levels, expectations and perspectives within medicine; and a collaboration of nursing and medical perspectives on patient care. With a focus on long-term results, the program aims to:
• advance meaningful cross-disciplinary communication to improve the efficiency, quality and safety of patient care;
• build mutual respect between nursing and medicine for future successful collaboration; and
• gain appreciation for the similarities and differences between nursing and medical care.
“Projects like this are really innovative in that they haven’t been done traditionally,” said Christopher Peabody, a fourth-year medical student who helped organize the event. “The roles of doctor and nurse are defined clinically, on the ward. It would be nice to have those communications skills and an appreciation of each other before we’re stuck in a stressful situation.”
Robert Wachter, MD, professor and associate chair of the Department of Medicine, noted that this is only one of the many steps UCSF is taking toward promoting interdisciplinary, interprofessional and transdisciplinary education. “These early efforts have convinced me that the only way we can improve communication is through better teamwork,” said Wachter, also chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine. “Communication problems have been proven to be the major cause of medical errors in the United States.”
Working Together
The shadowing program speaks directly to the UCSF Strategic Plan’s first priority: to ensure that “students and trainees are immersed in a culture that embraces interdisciplinary, interprofessional and transdisciplinary educational programs.” The strategic plan, launched in June 2007, also states that the University should “develop innovative, collaborative approaches for education, health care and research that span disciplines within and across the health sciences.”
The idea for interdisciplinary education is called for in national reports, including those by the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences and professional societies.
At UCSF, interdisciplinary education has been spearheaded by all four schools, as well as representatives from the Work~Life Resource Center, Physical Therapy department and the Office of Student Life. Interdisciplinary programs at UCSF include Interprofessional Education Day, the Resource Allocation Program, and most recently, the Molecular Medicine Graduate and Postdoctoral Training Program.
“All of the schools at UCSF aim to educate outstanding health professionals,” Dracup said. “The shadowing program is one of the strategies to create a different kind of graduate in each of our schools — a graduate that will be armed with the skills to communicate effectively with multiple members of the health care team.”
