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Shared learning at undergraduate level provides a potential means of promoting a more multi-professional approach to maternity care. Interprofessional education uses shared interactive sessions to promote different professional groups' understanding of each other and working together. This paper describes the use of a formative objective structured clinical examination as a method of interprofessional education. Mixed groups of student doctors and student midwives rotate through a series of clinical stations based on common labour ward scenarios. After completing each station they are given feedback by a facilitator on their problem-solving skills, knowledge and attitude to team working. The interactive nature of the sessions encourages deep learning, is student centred and promotes a positive attitude to multidisciplinary working. Both student groups felt they benefited from shared learning in this way and that the formative OSCE was an effective method of developing their clinical skills.

A report is presented on interprofessional study days for final-year medical students and junior staff nurses, providing valuable preparation for transition to the role of house officer. Guided by a view of shared learning as learning with and from members of another profession, a patient scenario pertinent to the nurses' ward experience was presented and developed. Participants planned and revised their responses to the patient's needs, practising pertinent clinical and communication skills at each stage. Students were challenged to integrate existing knowledge in the context of whole-patient care, and were able to clarify roles and responsibilities within the multidisciplinary team. They discussed ward management and patient management. The curriculum design and evaluation were guided by educational theories relating to readiness to learn and disjuncture. Nurse-medical student pairs, to teach each other practical skills and exchange information, were particularly highly valued. Siting the learning exper...

Delivering high quality healthcare increasingly requires effective team working, and interprofessional shared learning (SL) is crucial to this. This study compares the attitudes, 1 year after experience of an undergraduate SL programme, of students who had participated in the programme with their peers who had not.207 students were invited to complete a questionnaire to assess the impact of SL on attitudes to clinical competence and behaviour. Responses were received from 171 students (83%) who had either had no experience of SL, SL in lectures only, or SL in lectures and clinical placement.Significantly different responses were found between the three groups for a number of the statements, and these were further developed in responses to the open-ended questions. Only group 3 had developed and sustained a less exclusive attitude and were better able to appreciate that SL can make an important contribution to learning communication skills and understanding patient problems.This raises important questions about the approach taken to undergraduate SL if it is to have a contributory effect to attitudes about professional identity, and a significant effect in improving the quality of care provided by the doctors and nurses of tomorrow.

This investigation represents an attempt to illuminate issues in the relationship between shared learning, aspects of organizational climate, teamwork practices and inter-personal contact between health professionals. The study, completed in 1998 and conducted over the previous 3 years, involved 57 post-qualified health professionals undertaking a part-time 'top-up' degree in health studies. The extent to which climate promoted, maintained or inhibited collaborative practices was considered by examining the views and experiences of course participants over three successive years. Most interest in collaborative practice came from individuals already actively engaged in multidisciplinary work and with a clear sense of role within that context. No evidence was found to associate this form of shared learning with new or enhanced collaborative activity, but nearly all the professions involved accepted the principle of more flexible forms of working. Poor perceptions between disciplines were associated with low levels of contact in the workplace. Students who undertook a module focusing on collaborative practice had more positive perceptions about their work and were less likely to emphasize work demands in terms of shift-patterns, fatigue and/or stress.

This article discusses the process by which a questionnaire was developed specifically to measure attitude to shared learning. Over a three-year period the attitude questionnaire was developed and tested using pre-registration students who were engaged in a shared learning programme. These pre-registration students were from three professional groups, namely occupational therapy (OT), diagnostic radiography (DR), and therapeutic radiography (TR). While the study hypothesis was that shared learning would improve attitudes over the three-year period, the focus of this article is to discuss the process by which the research instrument was developed. The rationale for focusing on the process is a simple one. After a diligent literature search it was clear that there were no attitude questionnaires specific to attitude measurement in relation to shared learning. Thus without an already validated attitude to a shared learning questionnaire, it became imperative to create systematically a credible attitude measure of shared learning. The process centred on understanding how monadic scales are constructed and used to measure attitudes and perceptions of participants. Amongst a number of processes to be followed was the need also to check the reliability of the developed questionnaire. This was done using the Cronbach alpha coefficient. A Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0.7 was set as a minimum reliability requirement, which was duly satisfied. The outcome of this process was that it very useful to learn how to produce a suitable instrument to measure attitude to shared learning and to add in a small way to the range of attitude questionnaires available.