Implementing interprofessional bedside rounding at the prequalification stage

Abstract

Daniel R Tuite,1 David Healy,1 Thomas S MacKinnon2 1Faculty of Medicine, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Brighton, 2School of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, UKWe read with great interest the paper by Henkin et al,1 demonstrating that the use of interprofessional bedside rounding (IBR) significantly improved nurse–physician teamwork, particularly from the nurses’ point of view. This finding is relevant when one takes into account the importance of interdisciplinary teamwork; a review conducted by Epstein concluded that effective interprofessional teamwork both maximizes patient safety and increases job satisfaction and efficiency.2 We, as medical students, believe that inadequate emphasis is placed on interprofessional collaboration at the prequalification phase, and therefore, we suggest that implementing IBR at the university level could represent a method to improve teamwork between the nurses and doctors of the future.  View the original paper by Henkin et al.  

Keywords

• Interprofessional learning
• medical education
• IBR
• multidisciplinary teamwork
• medical student
• nursing student