Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Research has shown that patients receive better care when physicians and nurses work together as a team, sharing their knowledge and skills and making joint decisions. Good nurse-physician relationships also increase retention of nurses in the workforce and improve staff satisfaction. It is however unclear if contemporary medical and nursing education prepares students for such patient centered collaboration. For effective collaboration to occur the participating professions will have to understand and accept their own role and that of the other professionals in the team. Traditionally both physicians and nurses are educated in separate and independent environments where they learn to identify with the values and ethics of their own group, disconnected from other health care professions. This setting fosters professional arrogance, negative stereotyping and lack of respect and understanding of other groups and is clearly not compatible with collaborative practice later. Through the promotion of interprofessional education, where medical and nursing students learn from and about each other, it is expected that they will develop a better understanding of each other and be able to communicate more effectively. Currently interprofessional courses remain a small component of professional education with questionable influence on future practice. It is equally important to examine what attitudes and values are modeled and taught within professional schools. Through this research, I will interview recent nursing and medical graduates to identify how their training environment has enabled or hindered them to work with each other. This understanding will guide educational institutions to promote practices congruent with collaborative work.Ultimately such changes will lead to improved patient care, increased staff satisfaction and cost effective health care delivery.