A Simulation-enhanced, Workplace-based Interprofessional Education for Patient Safety: Hacettepe University Undergraduate Experience

Abstract

Interprofessional collaboration has become one of the most important and challenging issues in health care for the last 20 years. The gaps in the interprofessional collaboration and communication have been regarded as the main causes of medical errors in health care services. We have to develop educational programs with the responsibility of graduating health care professionals who will work in collaboration with other professionals at a safer workplace both for their patients and themselves. We started working in 2010. We had an aim of improved patient safety through an educational evolution called interprofessional with the help of simulation. Our first courses were electives for medical students in 2013. The  new version of the program as a two-year vertical, compulsory course for second and third year preclinical medical students of a six-year medical school in 2018. We worked with 10 departments and schools, and 16 units of the university hospitals; 75 health professionals and faculty members contributed as facilitators in the program. The students expressed satisfaction with their experiences in various workplaces of the hospitals, and their interactions with the students and the faculty members of other departments and schools. The program provided medical students with the opportunity of early patient contact and workplace experiences with various health care professionals.