What motivates managers to coordinate the learning experience of interprofessional student teams in service delivery settings?

This article addresses the realities of providing interdisciplinary student team placements (i.e., experiential team learning for students) in healthcare settings. Three site coordinators from different clinical settings in Alberta (a geriatric assessment unit, a geriatric dementia care unit, and a primary healthcare centre), who facilitated Student Team Placements from the University of Alberta (UofA) in 2004, comment on their experiences and incentives for participating in interdisciplinary teamwork with students. The coordinators suggest that students provide input into the sites’ continuous quality improvement cycle, contribute to host organizations, and confer benefits for the student preceptors, the staff and the patients who participate. The site coordinators also recognize and accept the responsibility common to all service providers, to model a unique site culture that promotes learning/teaching of team skills for health science students. The experience of others in the literature supports our findings that two systems – the system to educate health professionals and the system that influences the health of the community – can interact so that each realizes a mutual benefit.