“I didn’t realise they had such a key role.” Impact of medical education curriculum change on medical student interactions with nurses: a qualitative exploratory study of student perceptions

Interprofessional teamwork between healthcare professionals is integral to the delivery of safe high-quality patient care in all settings. Recent reforms of medical education curricula incorporate specific educational opportunities that aim to foster successful interprofessional collaboration and teamwork. The aim of this study was to explore the impact of curriculum reform on medical students’ perceptions of their interactions and team-working with nurses. We gathered data from 12 semi-structured individual narrative interviews with a purposive sample of male (n = 6) and female (n = 6) medical students from fourth year (n = 6 following an integrated curriculum) and fifth year (n = 6 following a traditional curriculum). Data were subject to narrative analysis which was undertaken using NVivo software. Overall, there was no notable difference in the responses of the participants on the traditional and integrated curricula about their interactions and team work with nurses. However, the introduction of an integrated medical curriculum was viewed positively but a lack of interprofessional education with nursing students, removal of a nursing placement and shorter clinical placements were perceived as lost opportunities for the development of educationally beneficial relationships. The participants reported that nurses play a number of roles in clinical practice which underpin patient safety including being medical educators who provide a valuable source of support for medical students. The participants highlighted different factors that could hinder or foster effective working relationships such as a lack of understanding of nurses’ different professional roles and mutual respect. Medical education needs to provide students with more structured opportunities to work with and learn from nurses in clinical practice. Further research could explore how to foster positive relationships between medical students and nurses.