Stakeholders in healthcare and education find interprofessional teamwork to be crucial for todays complex healthcare. Consequently, the students need to prepare for future collaboration with other professions. Interprofessional simulation (IPS) is a technique in which several professions can engage together in clinical scenarios. Using a survey we studied the perceived relevance of two IPS settings in which last-year medical and nursing students participated in acute care scenarios. The findings showed that students perceive IPS as being highly relevant and that students from the other profession contributed to their learning. IPS holds promise as a pedagogical tool towards future interprofessional competence. However, pedagogical improvements can be made, and the professional perspectives can be better balanced. Furthermore, in order to equip students with broader interprofessional competence, scenarios should include several professions and a variety of clinical contexts.

Studenter behöver träna på teamarbete och utveckla interprofessionell kompetens för att rustas för framtidens hälso- och sjukvård.

Utbildning för interprofessionell samverkan kan ske genom simulering där läkar- och sjuksköterskestudenter möts och agerar tillsammans i patientscenarier. 

Interprofessionell simulering upplevdes som relevant och engagerande av studenter på två lärosäten. Studenter från den andra professionen bidrog till lärandet. Det finns dock utrymme att ytterligare förbättra det pedagogiska genomförandet, och professionsperspektiven kan balanseras bättre. 

En gemensam simuleringsdag för sjuksköterske- och läkarstudenter har utvärderats och diskuteras här i relation till interprofessionellt lärande och simuleringsbaserat lärande.

IPL-simuleringen kännetecknas av ett starkt studentengagemang och upplevs som mycket relevant och kliniskt autentisk. Den simuleringsbaserade satsningen är alltså fortsatt aktuell och har utvecklats till en hög nivå med relevans för lärande och klinisk förberedelse. Innehållet rör såväl kliniska som team­relaterade kunskaper och kompetenser. Simulering som undervisningsform uppskattas högt och simulerings­instruktörens bidrag till lärandet lyfts fram. Ambitionsnivån kan ytterligare höjas på några punkter. Kurskamraternas bidrag i lärandet kan ytterligare stärkas, likaså omvårdnads­innehållet i scenarierna.

IPL-mål adresseras i aktiviteten, i synnerhet ökar teamsamverkan progressivt under dagen. Det inter­professionella lärandet kan stärkas ännu mer  genom att linjera tydligare med övriga IPL-moment samt knyta an till de uttalade IPL-curriculum-målen.

To be powerful, improvement of quality and safety (IQS) should be performed by all involved professionals in cooperation. Here we describe how we have designed and implemented improvement of quality and safety as a recurring interprofessional learning objective to all programmes at The Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS), Linköping University, Sweden. This initiative was strongly argued and implemented in close collaboration with the County Council of Östergötland (CCO), the main provider of health care in the region.

The Faculty of Health Sciences has experience of interprofessional education since more than 20 years, which we and external evaluations have found to be successful. In addition, all our educational programs are based on Problem-Based Learning (PBL) throughout the whole curricula. The procedures for IQS-work have great similarities to the processes of PBL, and the research process, hence, the implementation of IQS are easily acknowledged by the students, faculty and clinical staff.

Since 2008, students from all our undergraduate programs learn IQS-methodology during their first semester as individual projects, as part of the first module of interprofessional learning. Now the partnership with the CCO has offered opportunities to include practice of IQS in clinical settings. In close collaboration with the staff from primary health care centers or clinical wards, interprofessional student teams have identified areas of quality and safety improvement. These were e.g. i) accessibility to acute care, ii) routines regarding the discharge process at a surgery ward, or iii) hygiene aspects in primary health care The suggested conclusions and interventions were received, discussed and developed at the clinics.

Background: The purpose was to investigate adjuvant marrow-supportive high-dose chemotherapy compared with an equitoxicity-tailored comparator arm. Patients and methods: Five hundred and twenty-five women below theage of 60 years with operated high-risk primary breast cancer were randomised to nine cycles of granulocyte colony-stimulating factor supported and individually tailored FEC (5-fluorouracil, epirubicin, cyclophosphamide), (n = 251) or standard FEC followed by marrow-supported high-dose therapy with CTCb (cyclophosphamide, thiotepa, carboplatin) therapy (n = 274), followed by locoregional radiotherapy and tamoxifen for 5 years. Results: There were 104 breast cancer relapses in the tailored FEC group versus 139 in the CTCb group (double triangular method by Whitehead, P = 0.046), with a median follow-up of all included patients of 60.8 months. The event-free survival demonstrated 121 and 150 events in the tailored FEC- and CTCb group, respectively [P = 0.074, hazard ratio (HR) 0.804, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.633-1.022]. Ten patients in the tailored FEC regimen developed acute myeloid leukaemia (AML)/myelodysplasia (MDS). One hundred deaths occurred in the tailored FEC group and 121 in the CTCb group (P = 0.287, HR 0.866, 95% CI 0.665-1.129). Conclusion: The update of this study shows an improved outcome linked to the tailored FEC treatment in relation to breast cancer relapse, but also an increased incidence of AML/MDS. © 2007 Oxford University Press.

Telomere length was recently reported to correlate with cellular origin of B-cell malignancies in relation to the germinal center (GC). In this report, we measured telomere length by quantitative-PCR in 223 B-cell lymphomas/leukemias and correlated results with immunoglobulin (Ig) mutation status and immunostainings for GC/non-GC subtypes of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). Shortest telomeres were found in Ig-unmutated chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) [median telomere to single copy gene value (T/S) 0.33], differing significantly to Ig-mutated CLL (0.63). Contrary to this, mantle cell lymphomas (MCLs) exhibited similar telomere lengths regardless of Ig mutation status (0.47). Telomere length differed significantly between GC-like (0.73) and non-GC-like DLBCLs (0.43), and follicular lymphomas (FLs) had shorter telomeres (0.53) than GC-DLBCL. Hairy cell leukemias, which display Ig gene intraclonal heterogeneity, had longer telomeres (0.62) than FLs and non-GC-DLBCL, but shorter than GC-DLBCL. We conclude that although DLBCL and CLL subsets can be clearly distinguished, telomere length reflects many parameters and may not simply correlate with GC-related origin. © 2007 The Authors.