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Benjasirisan et al.

Chitchanok Benjasirisan, R.N., Lalipat Phianhasin, R.N., Suebsarn Ruksakulpiwat, MMed, Chongjit Saneha,

Ph.D., Pannipa Boontein, M.N.S., Sarinrut Sriprasong, Ph.D., Sarunya Koositamongkol, Ph.D., anistha Samai,

M.A., Prapatsinee Prapaiwong, M.N.S., Jongkonwan Musikthong, M.S., Wandee Tosuksri, M.N.S., Nattaya

Rattana-umpa, Ph.D., Warunee Phligbua, Ph.D., Chontira Riangkam, M.N.S., Autchariya Poungkaew, Ph.D.,

Ruttanaporn Kongkar, Ph.D., Sirikarn Hanrop, M.N.S., Piyoros kasetkala, M.N.S., Pawitra Jariyasakulwong,

M.N.S., Pichitra Lekdamrongkul, M.N.S., Jinsuta Tadsuan, R.N., Wimolrat Puwarawuttipanit, Ph.D.

*Medical Nursing Department, Faculty of Nursing, Mahidol University, Bangkok 10700, ailand.

The Preparation for Interprofessional Practice (IPP)

in Nursing Students at Mahidol University,

Thailand: The Situation Analysis

ABSTRACT

Objective: is study involved a situation analysis of nursing students’ preparation and demand for interprofessional

practice (IPP) with an aim to make improvements to the interprofessional education (IPE) curriculum.

Methods: is was a situation analysis involving 58 responses (75.32%) from the Faculty of Nursing, Mahidol University,

ailand, performed between August and December 2019. Personal information, closed-ended questionnaires, and

descriptive questionnaires were utilized to assess the participants’ perspectives regarding their approach to their

preparation and demand for IPP. Reection and interpretation methods were used to categorize the participants’

descriptive answers. Additionally, data are reported as the mean, frequency, percentage, and p-value as appropriate.

Results: Overall, 45 (77.6%) participants had never taken the IPE course before. Of those who had taken the IPE

course, 22.4% stated that having good communication skills was the main ability needed for multidisciplinary

nursing practice in an open-ended question, participants indicated that their self-identity had the key eect on

their condence in multidisciplinary nursing practice (Non-IPE attendants, n = 19 (32.76%), IPE attendants, n = 6

(10.34%)). Furthermore, 77.78% of respondents said they prefer to perform nursing practice to prepare themselves

to work with other healthcare professionals collaboratively.

Conclusion: IPE not only benets healthcare students by preparing them to be able to work in their eld but also

prepares them to be able to collaboratively operate with dierent healthcare personnel. In particular, communication

skills, self-condence, and nursing practice skills are important attributes that need to be prepared.

Keywords: Interprofessional education; interprofessional practice; the nursing profession; healthcare personnel;

situation analysis (Siriraj Med J 2021; 73: 128-140)

Corresponding author: Wimolrat Puwarawuttipanit

E-mail: wimolrat.puw@mahidol.ac.th

Received 15 July 2020 Revised 7 September 2020 Accepted 13 September 2020

ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5274-9943

http://dx.doi.org/10.33192/Smj.2021.18

INTRODUCTION

Interprofessional education (IPE) is a key strategy

for developing healthcare professional learners to prepare

them to be able to give patient care in a collaborative

team environment. e basic tenet of IPE is that when

healthcare professionals work together, patient care is

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improved.

1-4

Previous research has shown that IPE can

enhance the quality of healthcare services, empower

health systems, and lead to better health outcomes.

5-9

Furthermore, IPE can bring students together with

instructors from two or more health professions during

their training practice. is situation allows all participants

to learn from each other and to exchange ideas with

each other. Consequently, this leads to the creation of

shared knowledge and greater synergy among the various

healthcare professions.

9-10

In several countries, the perception of IPE has been

improving and it is seen as a fundamental determinant

for enhancing the eectiveness of health services.

11-12

Besides, numerous institutions, such as the World Health

Organization, National Academies Practice, and the

American Public Health Association, have indicated their

support for IPE.

4,9,13

e previous literature reports how

IPE, reviews of conferences, and regional IPE networks are

becoming more common in many countries. A systematic

review and meta-analysis of interprofessional education

in healthcare revealed a statistically signicant outcome

of intervention by the IPE program in healthcare (the

eect summary value of 1.37 with a condence interval

of 0.92 - 1.82). Nevertheless, the author recommended

that additional investigation of clinical trials may help

distinguish the eect of the IPE program on the students’

clinical competence.

Particularly in modern times, due to the complexity

of health conditions and the ever-increasing number of

patients, healthcare personnel need to be well trained

and highly versatile to provide a high quality of care.

Increasingly, working collaboratively with other healthcare

professionals is needed. For nursing teaching sta, it is

clear that they not only need to prepare students to be

nurses but also need to prepare them to be competent

interprofessional team members.

In the Faculty of Nursing, Mahidol University,

ailand, aer two years of delivering teaching courses

for IPE in the classroom as a selective course, as known

as NSID 332 Enhancing patient safety through inter -

professional collaborative practice, which concerns about

the science of safety, how it relates to problems with

patient safety in health care system, role of individuals

and inter-professional health care team in problem-

solving, team work, and team communication, we are

now looking to develop IPE education in the clinical eld

for interprofessional practice (IPP) in cooperation with

two other faculties, namely the Faculty of Medicine and

Faculty of Pharmacy. However, to develop a comprehensive

IPE curriculum, we need to observe and understand how

students prepare themselves for IPP. Previous research

has suggested that the interpretation of IPE could actually

be a barrier to the implementation of IPE.

Moreover,

the result of a primer for implementing IPE within the

pharmacy and health sciences curricula showed that it could

provide tools, guidance, and lessons for educators to better

know the process of improving practical IPE activities,

performing successful IPE programs, and evaluating

students’ educational results. Furthermore, collaborative

IPE programs can install a standard commission across

professional programs, develop eective health care teams,

form an assessment plan of students’ competencies, and

enhance patient care.

Accordingly, we adapted our questionnaire from

a survey that we generally survey students before they

attend their rst practicum section in the medical unit

therefore so our questionnaire related to IPE in terms

of nursing profession and multidisciplinary nursing

practice that cloud improve outcomes for the students

with regard to the students’ needs. Our objective in the

present study was to conduct a situation analysis regarding

nursing students’ preparation and demand toward IPP

in order to gain insights to guide the development of

the IPE curriculum at Mahidol University.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Study setting

Mahidol University has grown since its ocial

foundation in 1943 into one of the most prestigious

universities in ailand, and is now globally recognized

for its high-quality research and teaching and its many

exceptional accomplishments in teaching, research,

international academic collaboration, and professional

co-operation. In the university’s Faculty of Nursing, the

study strategies in the practicum nursing course are clear,

whereby students are closely supervised by professional

mentors, which provides students with opportunities to

learn from other healthcare professionals while learning

and practicing their skills.

Also, practicing in a medical unit in the Faculty

of Nursing facilitates the students gaining a clearer

understanding of the various roles in interprofessional

teams, aided by the curriculum design, and of the complexity

of diseases. Conventionally, nursing students are split

into four groups to ensure an optimal group size for

team-based learning, especially third-year students.

Practical sections, including in medical, surgical, pediatrics,

and maternity units, are fundamental units that are

mandatory for all nursing students to take. ird-year

nursing students also gain collaboration experience by

working with fourth-year nursing students, sixth-year

medical students, and pharmacists while practicing in

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medical units. ese settings allow the learners to be a

part of a healthcare team under the supervision of their

mentors.

is provides a good setting to collect data and

consequently, in this study, data were collected and

analyzed at the Faculty of Nursing, Mahidol University,

ailand.

Study design

This study involved a situation analysis of

interprofessional education (IPE) using a quantitative

method that included a questionnaire with closed-ended

and descriptive questions. e study was conducted before

developing the IPE curriculum. It will guide us to identify

the preference for the IPE curriculum; establishes a clear,

detailed, practical view of the possibilities, resources,

diculties, and limitations concerning students’ perspectives

and the quality of the situation analysis may aect the

success of the entire eort to develop further strategies.

Population and sample

As the annual assessment of readiness and perception

of students prior to starting the practical class performed by

the Medical Nursing Department, this situation analysis of

IPE was launched on August 9, 2019. e target population

consisted of 77 third year undergraduate nursing students

who had completed the fundamental nursing courses

and will study their rst practicum section in the medical

unit. Sampling was not decided, since we wanted to

reach all of the target population. e questionnaire was

distributed online, and 58 questionnaires were returned

(a response rate of 75.32%).

Study instruments

e participants were asked to ll out an online

questionnaire which comprised three parts as follows.

Part 1: Personal Information Inquiries

is part gathered information on the participants’

demographics, including age and gender (as “Men” or

“Women”), and their background in IPE (i.e., whether

participants had “ever studied an IPE course before” or

“never studied an IPE course before”).

Part 2

is part involved a single descriptive question to back

up part 1: How does the inspiration from IPE study help

students to apply their skills in multidisciplinary nursing

practice? If the respondents had IPE class experience

(i.e., they had answered “Yes” to the question “Have

you ever studied an IPE course before?” in question 3

of part 1), then they needed to type the answer to this

part. ese qualitative answers would be interpreted by

manual qualitative analysis using Microso words.

Part 3

is section consisted of 5 questions that essentially

inquired about the participant’s attitude toward IPE.

The first question asked about their personal

condence in applying IPE skills in nursing practice.

This was answered on a visual analog scale: a score

of 0 meant no condence, whereas, 10 was the most

condent. As shown in the study that self-condence is

the one of the factors that inuence the success in IPP.

is question asked about the circumstances that

convinced them about the importance of multidisciplinary

nursing practice (e.g. the activities that nursing students

feel most condent performing). is was answered on an

ordinal scale: participants needed to arrange 8 examples of

situations from the highest condence rating to the lowest.

e third descriptive question asked about the reasons

why students might lose condence in multidisciplinary

nursing practice. is is a qualitative question, and allows

the students to provide detail about what causes them

to lose condence.

e fourth question required the students to provide

a score for their comfort level with other professions in

multidisciplinary nursing practice (scale from 0 to 10,

with 0 the lowest score and 10 the highest score).

Finally, we asked the nursing students how they

prepare themselves for practicing and learning with other

healthcare professionals. is question is an open-ended

question.

Data collection

Aer the information was provided, participants who

had answered the questions online voluntarily (through

Google forms) were invited to take part in the full study

and then to submit to a questionnaire that would take

approximately 15 to 20 minutes.

Data analysis

For the descriptive answers, we rst reected on the

answers in order to interpret the student’s thoughts and

then categorized them in groups. For the quantitative

data, the data were inputted into Excel soware for the

measurements and analysis. Data are reported here as the

means, frequency, percentages, and p-value as appropriate.

RESULTS

Part 1: Personal Information Inquiries

Between August and December 2019, 58 out of the

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77 participants (75.32%) had completed and returned

the questionnaires, of whom 98.3% were female, 96.5%

were in the age range 19-21 years old, and 22.4% had

participated in the IPE elective course previously

(Table 1).

Part 2

is part comprised the descriptive question related

to part 1: How does the inspiration from IPE study help

students to apply their skills in multidisciplinary nursing

practice? If the respondents had prior IPE class experience,

they must answer this part of the questionnaire. e result

showed that 22.4% of the participants had taken the IPE

course previously. Of these, 40.00%, 26.67%, 20.00%, and

13.33% of them thought that the IPE course would help

them to apply communication skills, nursing practice

skills, collaboration skills, and patient safety skills more

eectively in working with other healthcare personnel,

respectively (Table 2).

Part 3

is section consisted of 5 questions that essentially

inquired about a participant’s attitude toward IPE.

e rst question asked about their condence in IPE

in preparing them for nursing practice. is was scored

on a visual analog scale, where a score of 0 meant no

condence, while 10 was the most condent. e results

revealed that their condence scores in multidisciplinary

nursing practice averaged 5.64 out of 10, with 37.9%

of participants scoring their condence as 7 or more

out of 10. e condence scores in multidisciplinary

nursing practice for students who had participated in

the IPE course averaged 7.07 out of 10 (n = 13), while

students who had not taken that subject before scored

this question 5.12 on average (n = 45) (p-value [P] =

0.000, 95% condence interval [CI]: -2.969 to -0.918)

(Fig 1).

is second question asked about the circumstances

that students were condent about using their skills in

multidisciplinary nursing practice. is was scored on

an ordinal scale; whereby participants needed to arrange

8 examples of situations, ranking them from the highest

condence to the lowest. e result showed that 34.48%

(n = 20) of respondents had the most condence in

taking a patient’s vital signs, while 25.86% (n = 15) were

condent doing fall prevention practice, and 24.14% (n

= 11) felt they could condently perform wound dressing

for patients (Fig 2).

e third descriptive question asked about the reasons

why students might lose condence in multidisciplinary

nursing practice. e results showed that almost half the

respondents (43.10%: 32.76% of non-IPE attendants,

10.34% of IPE attendants) stated that their self-identity had

the most impact on their condence in multidisciplinary

nursing practice, while 18.97% (17.24 % of non-IPE

attendants, 1,72% of IPE attendants) revealed that this

impact was caused by relationship with healthcare workers,

and 12.07% (5.17% of non-IPE attendants, 6.90% of

IPE attendants) said that their communication and the

patients were factors that contributed to their reduced

condence, respectively (Table 3).

e fourth question required the respondents to

rank their comfort score with other professionals in

multidisciplinary nursing practice (scale from 0, as the

lowest score, to 10, as the highest score). e result

showed that students felt the most comfortable performing

multidisciplinary nursing practice with classmates, with

the highest average score of 8.35 out of 10, followed by

teachers and nurse preceptors, with average scores of

8.18 and 8, respectively (Fig 3).

Finally, we asked the nursing students how they

prepare themselves for practicing and learning with

other healthcare professionals. e results showed that

almost 79.37% of the students preferred to prepare their

nursing practice skills to work with other healthcare

personnel. Moreover, 7.94%, 6.35%, 3.1%, and 3.17%

stated that collaboration skills, communication skills,

patient safety skills, and other skills need to be prepared,

respectively (Table 4).

Responses

Total

n = 58

Sex, no (%)

Men 1 1.7

Women 57 98.3

Age, years

19 2 3.4

20 43 74.1

21 11 19

24 1 1.7

27 1 1.7

Experience of IPE course

Studied IPE course before 13 22.4

Never studied IPE course before 45 77.6

TABLE 1. Characteristics of the study participants.

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TABLE 2. Application of the IPE course skills with multidisciplinary nursing practice.

Code Description Responses Frequency

(n=15)

Communication

skills

Nursing practice

skills

Collaboration

skills

Patient safety

skills

The students who studied

the IPE course before

responded that the IPE

course improves their

communication skills

among the multidisciplinary

team by learning how to

communicate more

efciency

The IPE course

emphasizes the nursing

practice as a crucial skill for

the practice in IPP to the

students.

The students apply for the

IPE course in collaborating

work by enhancing

collaboration skills such as

clarifying the roles of team

members, and identifying

and solving problems as

a team.

The IPE course

accentuates the importance

of patient safety to the

students.

(40.00%)

(26.67%)

(20.00%)

(13.33%)

"I have learned the differences and responsibilities

of each professional eld, and expect that this will

be useful for our communication"

"Obtain new knowledge that can be utilized to

enhance patient safety, such as how to

communicate with other professions more efciently"

“This course helps us clarify the multidisciplinary

team’s responsibilities, which improve team

communication, and collaboration in the future”

" To determine the experience of impermanence

that has happened, being more careful and

communicating well with other relevant professions"

"There are guidelines for organizing for efcient

communication with multidisciplinary groups"

"Work more comfortably, communicate better"

"Have knowledge of operational skills needed in

the ward"

"Increase knowledge for applying in nursing

practice"

"It would benet to be more prepared for the

practicum nursing course"

"I would like to develop innovation and implement

it with patients"

"I have learned the differences and responsibilities

of each professional eld, and expect that this will

be useful for our communication"

"I have learned that the mistakes that occurred may

come from numerous individuals. So, working

collaboratively would make us achieve the goal"

“This course helps us clarify the multidisciplinary

team’s responsibilities, which improve team

communication, and collaboration in the future”

"Being conscious of the risks that encompass us

would allow everyone to live in safety and reduce

harm to themselves and patients"

"Helping to be knowledgeable about patient safety"

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Code Description Responses Frequency (n=58)

Self-identity The aspect of one’s self- From The students who studied IPE course before 6 25

perception which generate “Lack of knowledge” (10.34%) (43.10%)

from the individual memories, “Fear”

belief, motivation, emotion, “Little knowledge or excitement”

and self-attribution “Knowledge is not well-rounded”

“Being blamed without being told what the mistake was”

“Lack of the courage to speak up for oneself”

From The students who never studied IPE course before 19

“Wrong nursing practice” (32.76%)

“Not having enough knowledge and concerns”

“Not having enough knowledge to provide nursing services to patients and incorrect

operations that may cause harm to patients”

“Knowledge and experience are not enough to conduct multidisciplinary practice”

   “Mistakesthatoccurduetoinsufcientknowledge” 

“The knowledge I have is not accurate”

   “Nothavingenoughknowledgeandcondenceinnursingpractice” 

“Not having enough knowledge, so may not understand the treatment order of other

professions”

“We are unprepared to perform”

“Insecurity in nursing for patients and inexperience”

“Concerns about lack of knowledge and fear”

“Being rushed and receiving everyone’s suggestion, which makes it hard to know

whom I have to listen to”

   “Notcondentinknowledgeoruentinprocedures” 

“Not as fast as I should be”

“Being unfamiliar, inaccurate, and afraid to make mistakes”

   “Notyetprocient” 

“When someone tells you to do what you do; it might cause uncertainty”

“Too excited to do”

“Excited and worried about not doing well”

TABLE 3. Causes of students losing condence in multidisciplinary nursing practice.

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Benjasirisan et al.

Code Description Responses Frequency (n=58)

Relationship with The way in which two or From The students who studied IPE course before 1 11

healthcare workers more people between nursing “Working with people with more experience" (1.72%) (18.97%)

students and healthcare workers From The students who never studied IPE course before 10

including nursing teacher and “Being accused of being wrong and not listening. For example, if I did a mistake and (17.24%)

nurse preceptor feel and the teacher would give suggestions for improving, such as telling me how to perform

behave towards each other in better ways, I would be ready to understand, but if there are sentences such as

“Why can’t I just do this?, Don’t you have any intellect to do this? etc., it would cause

   metolosemycondenceandIdonotwanttodothat” 

“Being scolded by a teacher with harsh words and psychological abuse leads to a loss

   ofcondenceandfeelingsofdiscouragement,andalackofenergyinnursing” 

“Fear of being scolded by the teacher despite sometimes being prepared to learn,

but the form of each person’s teaching is different”

“Teachers and senior nurses put too much pressure on while practicing”

“Preceptors”

“Being rigorously blamed by seniors or others until I’m afraid to do anything”

“The interdisciplinary members can do better nursing than nurses”

“Mentors”

"Being scolded"

"Being stared at”

Communication Verbal speech or other From The students who studied IPE course before 4 7

methods of expressing "Worried about communication because of misunderstanding medical terminologies" (6.90%) (12.07%)

information "Unclear communication such as doctor's handwriting"

"Being with a large group of people"

“Teacher speech”

From The students who never studied IPE course before 3

"Communication" (5.17%)

"The excitement that may cause communication errors"

"Do not understand when talking with colleagues”

TABLE 3. Causes of students losing condence in multidisciplinary nursing practice. (Continue)

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Code Description Responses Frequency (n=58)

Patients To worry or feeling nervous From The students who studied IPE course before 2 5

from patients’ condition or "Unsuccessful or successful procedures that affect the patient's body" (3.45%) (8.62%)

about practicing nursing "Patients feel pain while receiving care"

procedure that could affect From The students who never studied IPE course before 3

patient "Patients have abnormal symptoms from what we do" (5.17%)

"Dangerous to patients"

"Fear of hurting patients"

“Insecurity in nursing for patients and inexperience”

Others From The students who never studied IPE course before 10 10

"The pressure from the environment" (17.24%) (17.24%)

"Errors"

"When making a mistake"

"Nursing operations are unsuccessful or errors occur"

"Making a mistake and getting cursed at"

"Pressure"

"Loud noise"

"Activities that must be sterile"

"Environment"

"Contaminated, errors that may occur while operating"

TABLE 3. Causes of students losing condence in multidisciplinary nursing practice. (Continue)

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Benjasirisan et al.

TABLE 4. e preparation of students toward a multidisciplinary nursing practice.

Code Description Examples Frequency

(n=63)

Prepare The students think that “Prepare accurate knowledge to be ready to face 50

knowledge and preparing nursing various problems” (79.37%)

practice skills preparing nursing “Summarize the lessons learning about nursing practice

knowledge by reading skills”

a book, watching the “Regularly review the knowledge learned from practice,

related video, and remember the name of the drug, and the mechanism of

practicing skills before action of the drug”

the class is the “Watch video clips of nursing activities and read the

crucial method for pathology of diseases that are likely to be found in most

practicing with a patients, such as diabetes, in advance and prepare for

multidisciplinary team what may be encountered”

“Study the necessary knowledge for practicing. However,

would also like the teacher to help”

“Apply the knowledge gained from the IPE subject”

Collaboration The students think that “Learn the duties and work that need to be done together” 5

preparing themselves “Study and understand the work of each profession” (7.94%)

by learning the roles “Try to understand as much as possible other professions

and responsibilities and nd enough knowledge to understand instructions

of the healthcare team for the treatments given to patients”

will help them work

together effectively

Communication The students think that “Practice clear and concise communication and plan for 4

practicing clear and what can occur with patients together to come up with (6.35%)

concise communication a solution to the problem in our responsible role”

will be useful

Patient Safety The students think that “Learn and practice to prevent mistakes” 2

patient safety will be “Seek additional knowledge to gain accuracy in work” (3.17%)

helpful

Others “Be mindful and concentrate, relax a lot, seek more 2

knowledge and diligently practice as a person who (3.17%)

notices the diversity of ourselves and others”

“Review the content learned and get enough sleep”

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Fig 3. e average scores of how comfortable students are working with other professionals in multidisciplinary nursing practice.

Fig 1. Condence level of the students in multidisciplinary nursing practice.

Fig 2. e circumstances that students are condent about using their skills in multidisciplinary nursing practice. is was scored on an

ordinal scale; whereby participants needed to arrange 8 examples of situations, ranking them from the highest condence (1) to the lowest

(8).

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Benjasirisan et al.

DISCUSSION

IPE has been attracting lots of interest internationally.

Some institutions oer an IPE course as an elective

course or even solely for undergraduate students, such

as the universities in Germany.

In ailand, numerous

universities are currently seeking to make changes to

their courses from the traditional method of students

or faculty members doing an activity, taking courses, or

performing clinical practice individually to a model of

doing such things collaboratively.

Previous research

has shown that working collaboratively can result in

more eective outcomes, and, moreover, have suggested

that working collaboratively should even be dened as a

core competency.

In this study, we found that having

good communication skills is an important factor to

facilitating students to be able to work eectively with

other healthcare professionals.

According to the results from Table 2, IPE helps

students to be able to work in multidisciplinary teams

through developing their communication, nursing practice,

collaboration, and patient safety skills. e majority of

students in the present study who had completed the IPE

course previously mentioned that IPE improved their

communication skills, which they felt were necessary for

working in multidisciplinary teams. Correspondingly,

previous studies have reported similar results, namely that

IPE facilitates teaching students how to communicate,

collaborate, and learn from other healthcare professionals.

In particular, skills in interprofessional communication

are a precondition to improving IPP and can be facilitators

or barriers to IPP.

22-23

erefore, IPE, which strengthens

and promotes cooperation within multidisciplinary

teams, can play a pivotal role in preparing students for

IPP through helping the students to develop several

key skills they will need in clinical practice, especially

communication skills.

Fig 1 shows that the students in the present study who

had previously participated in the IPE course tended to

have a higher self-perceived condence level due to their

better understanding of the complexities of care and the

purposes of interprofessional teamwork. Longitudinal

studies of the impact of IPE learning have also found

that the participants show continuous improvements in

condence related to their improving communication

skills and positive attitudes toward interprofessional

relationships.

Both ndings demonstrate that encouraging

students who have participated in IPE courses to become

leaders in practical sections would be useful.

We also gathered data regarding some situations

where students would be condent in utilizing their

skills in multidisciplinary nursing practice, as shown

in Fig 2. e results demonstrated that the majority

of respondents selected taking vital signs, which is a

fundamental and important activity for nursing practice

as it can aid the early detection of many consequences.

Even though this part of the questionnaire is a survey

that we generally survey students before they practice

in clinical settings, this part of data allows us to know

what students’ interest is, which leads to designing the

course or scenario based on student centered learning.

Also, simulation would help students practice working

collaboratively as suggested in a previous research, which

stated that nursing students should be able to obtain

ample opportunities to engage in teamwork learning

experiences with other healthcare professionals to practice

collaborative working.

ereby, simulating fundamental

practices, like taking vital signs, would engage students

to practice teamwork, communication skills, and clinical

decision-making more eectively.

Furthermore, according to Fig 3, their classmates

are the people that most of the students felt the most

comfortable working with. is is in line with previous

research that reported that the strategy of enlisting

students as interprofessional leaders or facilitators could

be considered a successful strategy that has been applied

in the past few years.

Given this, utilizing students who

have experience in IPE as an educational resource in our

setting needs to be explored in the future.

e students who had previously participated in

the IPE course reported higher self-condence levels.

However, all the participants, including the IPE students,

perceived that having low self-condence, which is the

main part of self-identity can also be a barrier to working

in multidisciplinary teams, as shown in Table 3. In other

words, someone who has weak self-identity, which is an

individual’s belief in his/her ability that he/she cannot

complete the task, will result in poor readiness, and

discourage cooperation with team members.

ey realized

that preparing themselves by practicing procedures and

reviewing nursing information would be an essential

method to increase their condence. As we mentioned,

we designed the questionnaire from our general survey,

which normally surveys students before they practice in

clinical settings. is information also benets designing

IPE curriculum, although building nursing-specic clinical

knowledge and skills should be taught in profession-

specic settings. For IPE courses, we would focus on

integrating and strengthening nursing knowledge and

skills, and in the meantime, interprofessional skills

would be developed. ereby, IPE would be a catalyst for

facilitating students to integrate and strengthen nursing

skills in practice. Recent research revealed that IPE is key

Volume 73, No.2: 2021 Siriraj Medical Journal

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139

Original Article

SMJ

to eective interprofessional teaching and learning, with

deep implications for preparing students for practice.

Additionally, with the complexity of modern healthcare

environments, students are increasingly required to

obtain some learning in IPE, which would provide the

foundation for them to develop systems thinking and

critical thinking in complex healthcare systems.

CONCLUSION

To reach the most desirable outcomes for patients,

the students recognized that preparing themselves by

improving their skills is imperative, and low self-condence

is their weakness. In this regard IPE has many benets in

that it not only could help them to prepare themselves but

would also increase their self-condence by improving

their communication and collaboration skills. Additionally,

IPE would be a bridge between healthcare professions,

which would facilitate multidisciplinary teams to be able

to work and learn together eectively. is situation

analysis would help us to improve IPE curriculum focused

on preparing nursing students for IPP by based on the

student centered learning. Nevertheless, for our future

studies, we need to further study the impact of IPE in

terms of its application to improve the IPE course and

to ensure it ts our students’ needs.

Author contributions

Wimolrat Puwarawuttipanit designed and conceived the

whole study. Chitchanok Benjasirisan, Lalipat Phianhasin,

and Suebsarn Ruksakulpiwat performed the survey, data

analysis, draing, and revising the article, these authors

equally contributed to this work. Others help to prepare

students for interprofessional education classes and

suggest the design of the curriculum. All authors gave

nal approval of the version to be published, and agreed

to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

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