Chances for learning intraprofessional collaboration between residents in hospitals

What is it about?

Intraprofessional collaboration between is becoming more and more important. For example the collaboration between primary care doctors, such as general practitioners, and medical specialists in the hospitals. Patient safety issues are often related to the quality of these kind of collaboration between doctors. To prepare doctors well for providing good quality and continuity of care, intraprofessional collaboration needs explicit attention during medical education. Worldwide, primary care residents undertake hospital placements. At that moment they work in the same departments as Medical specialist residents. This could be a good opportunity to learn intraprofessional collaboration. We performed observations in three emergency departments and three geriatric departments of five hospitals in the Netherlands. This was followed by 42 in-depth interviews with the observed primary care residents, medical specialist residents and supervisors. RESULTS: Hospital wards are rich in opportunities for learning intraprofessional collaboration. But these opportunities are seldom exploited. There are various reasons for this: 1) Intraprofessional collaboration receives limited attention when learning goals for resiednts are formulated. So purposeful learning of intraprofessional collaboration hardly takes place. 2) Residents are not always aware that they might learn to collaborate intraprofessionaly during their placements. 3) Medical specialist-residents are used to teach primary care residents, but they are not used to searching for expertise from primary care residents. 4) Primary care-residents adapt to the Medical specialist-role when they work in the hospital and they are hardly tend to contribute their Primary care-knowledge. 5) Power dynamics in the hospital department can negatively influence the learning of intraprofessional collaboration. Based on these 5 points, an improvement in mindset, professional identity and power dynamics are crucial to facilitate and promote intraPC. CONCLUSION: Intraprofessional collaboration is not learnt spontaneously during hospital placements. But there are many opportunities to learn intraPC and we CAN benefit from these opportunities.To benefit from the opportunities to learn intraPC, adjustments in the set-up of hospital placements are necessary. Learning intraPC is promoted when there is a collaborative culture; hierarchy is limited, dedicated time for intraprofessional collaboration and support from the supervisor.

Featured Image

Photo by Cytonn Photography on Unsplash

Photo by Cytonn Photography on Unsplash