Medical Education Development Center, Gifu University, 1-1 Yanagido, Gifu, 501-1194, Japan.
Department of Dental Hygiene, University of Shizuoka, Junior College, 2-2-1 Oshika, Shizuoka-shi Suruga-ku, Shizuoka, 422-8021, Japan.
BMC Med Educ. 2022 Jan 3;22(1):8. doi: 10.1186/s12909-021-03082-z.
In a super-aging society, medical-dental collaboration is increasingly vital for comprehensive patient care. Particularly in dysphagia rehabilitation and perioperative oral functional management, dental hygienists' active involvement is pivotal to interprofessional collaborative practice. Despite this societal expectation, dental hygienists' experiences and perceptions of interprofessional collaboration have not been explored. This study aims to investigate dental hygienists' interprofessional identity formation and perceptions of interprofessional collaboration. Specifically, it was explored from the perspectives of dental hygiene students and hospital dental hygienists.
This study is underpinned by Wenger's social theory of learning, which focuses on identity as a component in the process of learning in communities. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 dental hygiene students in their final year at a technical college and five dental hygienists engaging in interprofessional care at a university hospital in Japan. The narrative data were analysed using an inductive approach to thematic analysis to extract themes regarding the identification of self in interprofessional teams.
Dental hygiene students found several barriers to the collaboration, including power relation and conceptual hierarchy, limited understanding of other professional roles, and differences in language and jargon. They viewed themselves as inferior in the interprofessional team. This resulted from their limited knowledge about general health and less responsibility for problems directly related to patient life and death. However, they could ultimately perceive the negative experiences positively as challenges for the future through reflection on learning in clinical placements. Contrarily, dental hygienists did not have such negative perceptions as the students did. Rather, they focused on fulfilling their roles as dental professionals in the interprofessional team. Their identities were formed through actively involving, coordinating their activity, and creating new images of the world and self in inter-professional communities of practice.
Interprofessional identity is relational as well as experiential, which is developed in complex and socially dynamic processes across intra- and inter-professional communities of practice. Engagement, imagination, and alignment are essential aspects of their interprofessional identities, which inform conceptual foundations of interprofessional education and collaborative practice in health care.
在老龄化社会中，医疗与牙科的合作对于全面的患者护理变得越来越重要。特别是在吞咽障碍康复和围手术期口腔功能管理中，牙科保健师的积极参与对于跨专业协作实践至关重要。尽管存在这种社会期望，但牙科保健师的跨专业合作经验和看法尚未得到探索。本研究旨在调查牙科保健师的跨专业身份认同形成和对跨专业合作的看法。具体来说，从牙科卫生学生和医院牙科保健师的角度进行了探讨。
本研究基于 Wenger 的社会学习理论，该理论侧重于身份认同作为社区学习过程的一个组成部分。对日本一所技术学院的 11 名牙科卫生专业的最后一年学生和一所大学医院从事跨专业护理的 5 名牙科保健师进行了半结构化访谈。使用归纳方法对叙事数据进行了主题分析，以提取关于在跨专业团队中自我认同的主题。
牙科卫生学生发现合作存在几个障碍，包括权力关系和概念层次、对其他专业角色的理解有限、语言和行话的差异。他们认为自己在跨专业团队中处于劣势。这是因为他们对一般健康的了解有限，对与患者生死直接相关的问题的责任也较小。然而，通过对临床实习中学习的反思，他们最终可以将负面经历视为未来的挑战。相比之下，牙科保健师没有像学生那样的负面看法。相反，他们专注于在跨专业团队中履行自己作为牙科专业人员的角色。他们的身份是通过积极参与、协调活动以及在跨专业实践共同体中创造新的世界和自我形象来形成的。
跨专业身份认同是关系性和经验性的，它是在跨专业实践共同体内部和之间的复杂和社会动态过程中发展起来的。参与、想象和一致性是他们跨专业身份认同的重要方面，为医疗保健中的跨专业教育和协作实践提供了概念基础。
