Carmen Basu BMJ

St George’s Hospital Medical School, London, is running a joint programme with Kingston University, Surrey, to integrate the teaching of medical students with nursing students in a pioneering new programme. The foundation course, which takes place in the first semester of the first year, incorporates a mixture of anatomy and physiology teaching alongside ethics and law tutorials.

Last year radiology and physiotherapy students were integrated with the medical students for the first time on this common foundation programme. Thanks to the positive feedback that was received from this part of the curriculum, BSc nursing students are now being included. “It is a unique programme that aims to
promote interpersonal and multidisciplinary learning,” says Graham Morgan, the head of the school of radiography. “It helps the students understand each other’s perspectives and aims to get them working together before they form prejudices and stereotypes of each other in the hospital.”

Pete Basford, the president of the medical society at St George’s Hospital Medical School, welcomes the proposed intermingling of medical students with student nurses. “Last year the common foundation programme was generally well received, and the benefits of interdisciplinary learning were supported by students. The addition of nursing students brings together even more health professions right from the outset of their training, which is to be welcomed.” He also expressed a belief that academic integration would spill over to interdepartmental socialising and have a positive effect on future relations between doctors and nurses. “We have already begun to organise events with the nursing students, and they are invited to all our medical society events. The younger medics are all for more integration and are even asking for the nurses to be placed in the same halls of residence as the medical students.” His main reservations surround the extra pressure the medical school will have to bear as a result of an increase in the number of students.

Student nurses have likewise optimistically embraced St George’s common foundation programme. Craig Nelson, the vice chair of the student nurse forum of the public service union UNISON, said: “If there is mutual mistrust between doctors and nurses that makes matters for any collaborative working team very difficult … it seems that [the foundation course] addresses this issue and may even improve collaborative working relations after graduation, providing better preparation for working together as a team.”

There are plans in the future to improve on the consolidation of teaching between medical and nursing students in tutorials on problem based learning in the second and third year, and in special study modules concentrating on interpersonal skills. It is hoped that being taught together will improve staff morale in the future and elicit more camaraderie between the two disciplines.