The overarching purpose of this project is to develop knowledge on how interprofessional collaboration and teamwork could be educated for by means of simulation-based learning environments.
The project is positioned within a global discourse about the need of renewal of professional healthcare education. Within this discourse, leading medical experts have criticised the training of health personnel for not adequately preparing for cooperation and interprofessional communication. Against this backdrop, a critical question for the future is how to organise and design healthcare education in order to overcome these problems. Previous research on professional learning and the relationship to working life show that the organisation of education has an impact on how students perceive how well they are prepared for professional life, and how their first entry in work life is constituted and experienced. Much effort has been devoted to the development of cross-disciplinary education in healthcare. Still there is a lack of praxis-oriented research on how in situ training in realistic environments could contribute to the development of the competences needed for interprofessional conduct.
The project comprises three praxis-oriented, empirical studies, collecting data by a standardised way of video recording at three Swedish simulator centres. Data will be subject to specific as well as collaborative analyses and integrative theorising across findings by the research teams. In all, the project aims at answering the following research questions:
- How can learners from different professions achieve share understandings of simulated situations and coordinate their work?
- How does preparation for simulation training shape learners’ understanding of simulations and possibilities to benefit from the training?
- How can feedback on simulated events promote reflections of relevance for for clinical work?
- How can the findings from the empirical studies carried out in the project be integrated in undergraduate curricula and continuing education?
