Medicine as It Should Be: Teaching Team and Teamwork during a Palliative Care Clerkship.

BACKGROUND

Interprofessional Education (IPE) is an important component of medical education. Rotations with palliative care interdisciplinary teams (IDTs) provide an optimal environment for IPE and teaching teamwork skills.

OBJECTIVE

Our objective was to assess the learning of senior medical students during a palliative care rotation.

DESIGN

A constant comparison method based on grounded theory was used in this qualitative study.

SETTING/SUBJECTS: Senior medical students completed a semi-structured reflective writing exercise after a required one-week palliative care clerkship. Sixty randomly selected reflective writings were analyzed.

MEASUREMENTS

The reflective writings were analyzed to evaluate the student's experiences.

RESULTS

Dominant themes identified were related to teams and teamwork. Eight specific themes were identified: value of IDT for team members; value of IDT for patient/family; importance of each team member; reliance on other team members; roles of team members; how teams work; team communication; and interdisciplinary assessment and care planning. Students described exposure to novel experiences and planned to incorporate newly learned behaviors in their future practice.

CONCLUSION

By participating in palliative care IDTs, medical students consistently learned about teamwork within healthcare. Additionally, they learned the importance of such teamwork to patients and the team itself. Rotations with palliative care IDTs have a significant role to play in IPE and preparing medical students to practice on teams.