“A real eye opener” – development, implementation and evaluation of a seminar on interprofessional teamwork in GP specialty training

Abstract

Introduction: The successful treatment of a multitude of chronic diseases is largely dependent on effective interprofessional collaboration. In Germany, many healthcare employees feel unprepared for the challenges of interprofessional teamwork. Can a seminar designed by an interprofessional team for an interprofessional target group improve mutual understanding and provide the basis for successful interprofessional collaboration?Methodological approach: For the development of the seminar, Kern’s model for curriculum development was used, which includes the following six steps: problem identification, needs analysis, goal definition (learning objectives and learning content), educational strategies, implementation and evaluation. The all-day event brought together physiotherapists, pharmacists, medical assistants and doctors undergoing specialist training in family medicine. Representatives of the various professions were recruited through multiple channels (associations, pharmacist societies, alumni-networks, etc.). Practical examples and role-play were used to develop a better understanding of each other’s professions and to support goal-oriented and appreciative communication among them. The seminar belongs to the curriculum provided by the Hesse Competence Center for Specialist Training in General Practice and has so far taken place three times. The evaluation was carried out by means of a detailed, self-designed questionnaire with five open and 20 closed questions. The statistical analysis was mainly descriptive (mean value, minimum, maximum and SD).Results: Overall, 29 persons have participated in the workshops (eleven doctors undergoing specialist training, six physiotherapists, six pharmacists, six medical assistants). Overall, the seminar was rated very highly. Individual aspects of the seminar’s design, such as relevance and practice-orientation, as well as an assessment of whether the seminar contributed towards increasing participants’ ability to collaborate with other professionals, were rated positively. In addition, a pre-post comparison of self-assessed ability to collaborate interprofessionally showed significant improvement.Discussion: This highly interactive one-day seminar design contributed towards improving understanding for other professions and communication skills. In order to achieve a broad-based improvement in interprofessional collaboration over the long term, this or similar concepts should be employed more extensively.Conclusions: The results suggest that participants in interprofessional seminars consider them to improve interprofessional collaboration.

Keywords

• interprofessional collaboration
• interprofessional team
• team communication
• primary care