Students’ Interprofessional Collaboration in Clinical Practice: Ways of Organizing the Patient Encounter

Abstract

As health care increases its focus on collaborative practice, universities must provide students with opportunities to learn how to collaborate with different professions and translate this knowledge into practice, known as interprofessional education. Simultaneously, researchers struggle to understand the full complexity of interprofessional education and must therefore conduct multiple-site studies, employ observational work, and apply theory throughout the research process. This paper draws on focused ethnographic fieldwork at two different sites focusing on how students organize collaboration during interprofessional clinical placements. Findings indicate that the way students organize their collaboration is intertwined with how patients were introduced during handovers and involved mobilizing knowledge as “betwixt and between” familiar student practices and unfamiliar clinical practices. Findings also show how authentic situations, artifacts and spatial features supported students to mobilize collaboration.