Making the most of it

: Perceptions of formal and informal interprofessional learning opportunities on practice placements

Abstract

Collaborative working is recognised as necessary for practice in health, social care, and education (HSCE) professions. Interprofessional education events can be helpful in developing students’ attitudes and skills for working together but these can be complex to organise, and the learning can be obscured by experiences in practice placements. This research set out to explore the formal and informal opportunities that students have for contact with others and resultant learning within their normal practice placements.

This is a mixed methods study in two phases using a social network approach within a critical realist perspective. The first phase explored final year health, social care and education students’ contact with students and staff in other work roles, through an online survey (n=48). Due to Covid-19 the second phase used the social network data from the first phase as a visual stimulus for semi-structured interviews with academic staff (n=19) who support HSCE placements. This enabled a deeper understanding of expectations of the student experience regarding formal, informal, and naturally occurring learning opportunities about other professions and collaborative working.

The results indicate that all HSCE students have contact with people in other work roles, but academics had not previously considered the impact of student learning from these opportunities. Practice learning is primarily focused on students’ own professional roles with less recognition of explicit or implicit learning about collaborative working. Contact with other professions is not enough, students can be exposed to professional hierarchies, power dynamics and poor collaborative practice during practice placements. Action to recognise and support student learning can be taken by academics, practice educators and students in all placements so that poor practice is not accepted unquestioningly.

Date of Award	16 May 2023
Original language	English
Supervisor	Craig Johnston (Supervisor) & Kerry Ball (Supervisor)