Purpose: The demand for inter-professional work (IPW) in the medical field has recently increased. Inter-professional education (IPE) is the foundation of the IPW. Therefore, it is difficult to determine whether IPE is sufficient in the current education of medical professionals. We developed a new IPE that is a hybrid of face-to-face and online communication and verified its educational effectiveness. Methods: The study included 31 participants, comprising 7 medical and 8 nursing students from Kanazawa Medical University, along with 8 students from the Department of Physical Therapy, and 8 from the Department of Occupational Therapy enrolled in the Kanazawa Rehabilitation Academy. The IPW simulation (IPWS) was conducted using a hybrid educational method that combined face-to-face self-professional and online multi-professional conferences. We collected the job descriptions of each medical professional through a web survey and analyzed them using text mining. The analysis results were compared before and after the implementation of the IPW simulation. Results: The average number of extracted words increased after the IPWS compared to before the IPWS, and the occurrence of words not seen before the IPWS was observed after the IPWS. The IPWS thus changed the understanding of each medical profession. Extracting feature words indicating professions among physical and occupational therapists and the realization between professions increased. Conclusion: The hybrid IPWS, both face-to-face and online, is a useful tool for IPE.
正志 et al. (Sun,) studied this question.