An Interprofessional Education Pilot Study for Nursing and Speech‑ Language Pathology Students

Abstract

Background: Despite the complexity of patient care and promise of interprofessional collaboration in health professional educational programs, interprofessional education and practice implementation challenges exist.

Materials and Methods: A pilot study with a nonequivalent comparison before/ after design was conducted to examine undergraduate students’ and graduate students’ knowledge of the role of nurses and speech‑language pathologists (SLPs) while working with patients diagnosed with dysphagia. All students received pre‑ and post‑tests assessing their knowledge of the respective profession.

Results: A repeated measure of analysis of variance using pre‑ and post‑tests by group design revealed a strong and statistically significant main effect from pre‑ to post‑testing, [F (1, 19) = 17.42, p = 0.001, and partial h2 = 0.48].

Conclusions: The results indicated that students received higher scores on post‑tests. This study reinforces the importance of collaboration of healthcare professionals during their professional coursework.