Health Care Professional Students' Perceptions of Teamwork and Roles After an Interprofessional Critical Care Simulation.

BACKGROUND: Educational opportunities for health care professional students to learn collaborative communication and the roles and responsibilities of other disciplines are minimal unless faculty are intentional about facilitating this interdisciplinary learning. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to determine how a simulation-enhanced interprofessional education (Sim-IPE) teaching strategy fostered communication and interdisciplinary awareness between students from multiple disciplines. METHOD: This pretest-posttest design surveyed undergraduate students from 5 disciplines. The Student Perceptions of Interprofessional Clinical Education-Revised tool examined students' perceptions of teamwork and roles after an in-depth, multistate critical care simulation experience. RESULTS: All students' perceptions of teamwork increased after the Sim-IPE. More experience in the health care field is associated with an increased perception of teamwork and roles/responsibilities. DISCUSSION: On the basis of these findings, the critical care Sim-IPE was an effective teaching strategy to increase the perception of roles and responsibilities of interprofessional critical care team members with applicability to many other specialty topics.