Interprofessional collaboration plays an important role within health professions and between health professions and other professions. The current concept of interprofessional collaboration considers the relationships between the professions and the patients' perspective. The collaboration between speech-language therapists and interpreters enables a patient-centered collaboration and equal communication. To prepare for interprofessional collaboration, interprofessional learning contents during professional training and education are essential. Especially in the German-speaking area the scientific data on interprofessional collaboration between speech-language therapists and interpreters is limited. This collaboration has great significance, but speech-language therapists have insufficient training and little experience in interprofessional collaboration with interpreters. Which challenges do speech-therapy students and translation students face in the collaboration with the other profession? Did the speech-therapy students categorize the didactic concept of the interprofessional unit with the translation students as useful? Which new aspects could teach and deepen this didactic concept? 12 students (5 speech-therapy students and 7 translation students) participated in an interprofessional teaching unit. The latter was evaluated by means of 2 focus group discussions and 1 online survey evaluated. The speech-language therapy students stated challenges like length of their speech units or uncertainty regarding the accuracy of the translation. They found this interprofessional lecture useful and expanded their knowledge of the interpreters' job description and deepened their interviewing and therapeutic preparation skills.
Assistive robotic systems hold strong potential to improve autonomy and quality of life (QoL) for individuals with tetraplegia by supporting activities of daily living (ADLs). This project focused on developing a user-centered command structure and graphical user interface (GUI) for a robotic arm tailored to this population. Key goals included maximizing usability, managing robotic control states effectively, and enabling intuitive interaction and semi-automated task execution. The study was guided by three key research questions addressing how user needs can be effectively incorporated into control-structure design, which interface elements most enhance usability for individuals with tetraplegia, and how robotic control states can be managed to ensure safe and reliable everyday operation.
Expertise from multiple professions is often required to solve complex problems in healthcare. This requires interprofessional clinical decision-making processes, which should be learned during training. Interprofessional digital patient cases offer the opportunity to train clinical reasoning.
The community setting represents a key environment for the provision of mental health care. Community mental health nurses (CMHNs) play a vital role in delivering person-centered care in outpatient settings. But they are not only essential providers of care; they are also key actors in coordinating and integrating support across fragmented systems. Despite this, the specific tasks and contributions of CMHNs — particularly those in advanced practice roles — remain insufficiently defined in the literature.
Demographic change is increasing the proportion of older individuals in society, which also heightens the risk of accidents, particularly in road traffic. Virtual reality (VR) applications offer innovative opportunities to promote mobility, safety, and accident prevention among older adults through engaging and safe training environments.
Patients rely on multiple healthcare providers working cohesively as a team. However, learners in health-related disciplines are typically trained in isolation from one another. While some literature has explored how collaborative learning at the graduate level, undergraduate health programs are often not included in this discourse.
The Austrian eHealth Strategy’s operational objective O8.1 stipulates that digital skills are established in the training and continuing education of healthcare providers by 2030. This study examined the extent to which digital skills are embedded in the curricula of bachelor’s degree programs in physiotherapy.
Annual influenza vaccination is recommended for all healthcare workers because of their increased risk of nosocomial infections. Despite the recognized benefits, there is public concern about vaccination against many diseases, often termed vaccine hesitancy. As a result, influenza vaccination coverage in all European countries, including the Netherlands, is below the 75% recommended by the WHO and the European Union, which poses a threat to public health. With this in mind, this study aimed to gain insights into influenza vaccine uptake among healthcare workers of a university hospital in Amsterdam.
Implementation science investigates how scientific knowledge can be effectively and sustainably translated into practice. A variety of models, theories and frameworks provide structured and theoretically grounded approaches for planning, executing and evaluating implementation efforts.
A demographic shift in the UK population has significantly changed the burden of disease. Coupled with staff shortages in allied health professions within the National Health Service, the introduction of assistant roles aimed at freeing up qualified therapists has modernised the professions and challenged traditional practices.
Opportunities for interprofessional education (IPE) remain insufficient for healthcare students and young professionals. To address this, the Swiss Health Alliance for Interprofessional Education (SHAPED, www.shaped-ip.ch) has developed a new IPE activity: the Interprofessional Case Discussions (ICDs). Led by a near-peer facilitator, students from different healthcare professions discuss a clinical case in a “murder-mystery” format: Can they catch the murderer (aka the disease) in time to save the patient? This study assessed the impact of the student-initiated ICDs on participants’ IPE perception.
The projected increase in older adults in the EU to 28.5% by 2050 highlights the need for improved geriatric care. Oropharyngeal dysphagia is common in older adults; it is linked to frailty and neurodegenerative diseases, and can cause malnutrition, dehydration, and aspiration pneumonia. Though screening reduces pneumonia cases in stroke patients, it also risks overdiagnosis in geriatric patients due to age-related swallowing changes that are often misinterpreted by existing tools.
Community Health Nursing plays a crucial role in primary care across Europe, with each country adopting distinct approaches. In Austria, the increasing healthcare demands necessitate a reevaluation of Community Health Nurses (CHNs) competencies, skills, and roles. The current descriptions of these aspects for CHNs in Austria lack comprehensiveness, posing a challenge to effectively meet these demands. Objective: The aim of the present study is to explore the clinical skills, health management, and nursing management competencies among CHNs.
Couple relationships of patients and relatives play a central, insufficiently recognised role in neurorehabilitation. The challenge lies in the systematic recording and utilisation of psychosocial couple dynamics in the course of therapy. This paper proposes a theory-based, practice-oriented conceptualisation for dealing with different types of couple relationships. This helps health professionals to recognise relationship dynamics and develop therapeutic strategies to address couples' psychosocial needs and thereby promote therapeutic success.
Presenteeism – working even though you are ill – is a widespread phenomenon that has negative consequences for both employees and employers. It particularly affects healthcare professionals (HCPs) and, due to working from home, increasingly also office professionals (OFPs). Team culture has hardly been researched in connection with presenteeism. The aims of this study are to describe how healthcare professionals and office professionals experience their team culture in connection with presenteeism and to identify possible differences between the occupational groups.
Chronic pain is a complex social and health challenge, as it represents a life-changing burden. In outpatient healthcare, where clear structures and guidelines for interprofessional collaboration (IPC) are lacking, people with chronic pain (PWCP) and health professionals (HPs) encounter barriers. This study aims to identify the needs of PWCPs in the Swiss outpatient healthcare system and to compare these needs with the views of HPs.
Interprofessional education (IPE) provides students with opportunities to consider the impact of effective collaboration on patient outcomes. Socializing beyond one’s own profession in an interprofessional team challenges the social identity theory that postulates favoring those within the same group, or, in this case, the same health profession. The social identities that learners form before entering a degree program may impact team socialization. We describe how students considered their social identities while interacting in an interprofessional team and engaging with patients in experiential patient-centered learning.
Medical rehabilitation for children and adolescents in Germany has been strengthened in recent years, including facilitated admission of parents/caregivers, leading to an increase in the number of ‘accompanying persons’ in the rehabilitation setting. The aim of this study was to explore the roles of accompanying persons in rehabilitation, taking into account the perspectives of different stakeholders.
The study examines the readiness for shared learning based on interprofessional education (IPE) among Brazilian medical students participating in preceptorship programs. A total of 642 students from all six medical courses across a state in Brazil completed the Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale (RIPLS) and a sociodemographic questionnaire. The results, analyzed across three RIPLS factors—teamwork and collaboration, professional identity, and patient-centered care—reveal a positive inclination toward collaborative learning, though each factor was influenced by different variables. Teamwork and collaboration (factor 1) were significantly associated with gender, medical program semester, prior teamwork experience, and current clinical practice. Professional identity (factor 2) was shaped by gender, prior bachelor’s degree, type of university (public or private), and medical program semester. Patient-centered care (factor 3) showed significant relationships with gender, prior bachelor’s degree, type of university, medical program semester, and current clinical practice. These findings highlight the importance of acknowledging various demographic and educational variables when assessing student readiness for shared learning. Such insights can help medical programs refine their curricula and develop educational strategies to promote IPE, fostering collaborative healthcare practice in alignment with both national and international guidelines.
