Implications for school nursing through interprofessional education and practice

Winsome Lam, Engle A Chan and Kit SS Yeung

Journal of Clinical Nursing, 2013, vol. 22, issue 13-14, 1988-2001

Abstract: Aims and objectives To explore the interprofessional collaboration between nursing and social work professionals in their delivery of health services for schoolchildren. Background Interprofessional education has long been recommended as a way to meet the need for effective collaboration in school health service with a view to improving the quality of health care. No local study in Hong Kong has looked specifically at how nursing and social work professionals carry out school health services through interprofessional education and practice. Therefore, an examination was conducted of collaboration on a community‐based school caring project. Design A qualitative design was employed, using semi‐structured interviews, field observation and field debriefing. Methods Seven nursing students and five social work students were recruited and interviewed in 2011. The transcripts were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Results Three themes were identified: (1) early identification of children's needs through interprofessional collaboration for health promotion, (2) prompt referral for schoolchildren in need, and (3) comprehensive planning and implementation of school health service. Conclusion The strength of collaborative work between nursing and social work professionals is that it helps to identify and address these complex health needs of children. Healthcare providers are hence able to develop a fuller understanding of children's problems, which in turn enables them to provide appropriate and effective health promotion interventions. Relevance to clinical practice The development of interprofessional education for school health services should be envisaged by the local higher educational institute and policy makers to reduce children's risk‐taking behaviours and promote their health and well‐being. Health educators and health policy makers can better understand how interprofessional education and collaboration can promote children health service for regional and national policy and practice.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.12163

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:jocnur:v:22:y:2013:i:13-14:p:1988-2001

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Clinical Nursing from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().