JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Collaboration with other professions is essential in healthcare education in order to prepare students for future clinical teamwork. However, healthcare education still struggles to incorporate interprofessional education in the curricula. Distance learning and virtual patients (VPs) may be useful additional methods to increase students’ possibilities for interprofessional learning.

Objective:

The present study had two aims. The first was to assess if an interprofessional VP case can facilitate medical students` learning about team collaboration in online groups. The second was to assess how students experienced learning with the VP when remotely connected with their group.

Methods:

This was a mixed methods design. The VP case concerned a 73-year-old man who needed help from different health professions in his home after a hip fracture. Questionnaires were answered by the students before and directly after each session. Qualitative group interviews were performed with each group of students directly after the VP sessions, and the interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis.

Results:

A total of 49 medical students in semester five participated in the study, and these were divided into 15 groups with two to five students in each group who worked together with the interprofessional VP without the teacher’s guidance. In the analysis of the group interviews, we identified one theme – The interprofessional VP promoted student interaction and gave insight into team collaboration. Two categories were found: 1) The structure in the VP facilitated students´ learning and 2) Students perceived the collaboration in their remotely connected group as well-functioning and effective. The results from the questionnaires showed that the students had gained insights into the roles and competencies of other health care professions.

Conclusions:

This study demonstrates that the interprofessional VP gave insights into team collaboration and increased the understanding of other professions among student groups comprised only of one profession. The interprofessional VP seemed to benefit students´ learning in an online remote learning context. Though our VP was not used as an interprofessional student activity according to the common definition of interprofessional education, the results imply that it still contributed to students´ interprofessional learning.