An Interprofessional Education Pilot Study for Nursing and Speech-Language Pathology Students

BACKGROUND: Despite the complexity of patient care and promise of interprofessional collaboration in health professional educational programs, interprofessional education and practice implementation challenges exist. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A pilot study with a nonequivalent comparison before/after design was conducted to examine undergraduate students’ and graduate students’ knowledge of the role of nurses and speech-language pathologists (SLPs) while working with patients diagnosed with dysphagia. All students received pre- and post-tests assessing their knowledge of the respective profession. RESULTS: A repeated measure of analysis of variance using pre- and post-tests by group design revealed a strong and statistically significant main effect from pre- to post-testing, [F (1, 19) = 17.42, p = 0.001, and partial η(2)= 0.48]. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicated that students received higher scores on post-tests. This study reinforces the importance of collaboration of healthcare professionals during their professional coursework.