Lessons from interprofessional e-learning: piloting a care of the elderly module.

Educating health care professionals is a key issue in the provision of quality healthcare services. Interprofessional education has been suggested as a means of meeting this challenge. Four Finnish polytechnics providing education for nurses, social workers and physiotherapists wished to develop the...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Journal of Interprofessional Care Vol. 18; no. 3; pp. 269 - 279
Autores principales: Juntunen A, Heikkinen E
Formato: research tables/charts Journal Article
Publicado: Taylor & Francis Ltd Aug2004
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:Educating health care professionals is a key issue in the provision of quality healthcare services. Interprofessional education has been suggested as a means of meeting this challenge. Four Finnish polytechnics providing education for nurses, social workers and physiotherapists wished to develop the content and methods of teaching the care of the elderly by collaboratively creating and implementing an interprofessional module of 15 European Credit Transfer units, using e-learning. This paper examines the planning and assessment of the impact of the pilot module. The web-based environment eminently suited teaching interprofessional care of the elderly. It supported content and methodological development and renewal of the module. It enabled discussion and collaboration between nursing, social work and rehabilitation teachers and students from the Polytechnics which are located in different parts of Finland. However, it became evident during the pilot that the most crucial challenges of the web-based pedagogy were in the ability of the teacher to supervise, support and motivate students and the organisation of interprofessional learning offered by collaborating institutions.