A longitudinal study of the influence of learning environments on educating medical students for patient-centred collaborative practice

Introduction: The growing expectations of patients in an increasingly complex health system have led to a greater focus on quality and safety, and patientcentredness. Collaboration between health professionals and their patients is seen as essential to achieve these outcomes. In response to calls to prepare health practitioners for this collaborative practice, many academic institutions are implementing opportunities for interprofessional learning between students from different health professional backgrounds. Most of these initiatives and their associated literature as well as the measurement tools refer to this student learning as interprofessional learning (IPL) or interprofessional education (IPE). A strategy to build a connectedness between students from different health professions includes sharing the joint enterprise of patient care. An alternative approach is to provide early and extensive clinical experience in the real world of clinical practice, and allow students to engage with multiple communities of practice, learning together with a range of different healthcare professionals and patients. This approach was adopted by the University of Wollongong medical school in Australia, the context of this research. Student encounters with patients during their medical education provided the mise-en-scène for authentic learning, preparing students for their future roles as doctors. This study followed a cohort of graduate-entry medical students in their journey through a variety of simulated and real healthcare learning environments in their medical degree, to answer the research question: How is the learning environment influential on educating medical students for patient-centred collaborative practice?