Effects of interprofessional education for the first-year students in a medical university

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to evaluate a learning curriculum of PBL tutorial and that of early exposure education for the first-year students. In A university, these two units, i.e., PBL tutorial and early exposure, were developed to play central roles for the first-year interdisciplinary education and more emphasis has been placed on them for the past few years because of the increasing importance of interprofessional work (IPW) for various medical issues. We present the overview and learning concepts of these units, and some details, such as time tables and how the first-year students of 4 schools (Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Nursing and Rehabilitation Sciences) in A university were separated into interdisciplinary teams. Evaluation of these units was made by questionnaire analysis and it has clarified that the programs effectively met the aims of the units because they bring improvement of motivation for learning IPW to the first-year students in A university.