Student attitudes to undergraduate interprofessional education

Interprofessional education in health care has been the focus of increasing attention in recent years. However, there is still great debate about when and how to introduce it in undergraduate studies. St George's Hospital Medical School with the Joint Faculty of Health Care Sciences of Kingston University was ideally placed to introduce, as part of its 1996 new curriculum, a Common Foundation Programme (CFP). This incorporated degree students in medicine, radiography, physiotherapy, and nursing learning together for the first term of their courses. As part of the evaluation of the CFP, students' attitudes to the course and each other were surveyed at the beginning and the end of the term, for the 1998 and 1999 intakes. The results showed that students arrive at university with stereotyped views of each other, and that these views appeared to become more exaggerated during the CFP. Students felt that the CFP would enhance interprofessional working, but there were concerns that it forced them to learn irrelevant skills. Students whose parents worked as health care professionals, held stronger stereotyped views. Our findings challenge any notion that students arrive without preconceived ideas about the other professions. Further work is needed to determine how best to break down stereotypes, and to advance our understanding of the most appropriate models for interprofessional education, to enable graduates to work effectively in today's environment.