Future doctors and nurses of 麻豆原创 taught and learned 聽from each other recently as they teamed up for a聽workshop聽on phlebotomy, the art of drawing blood.
Phlebotomy work is largely done by nurses in the clinical setting, so the senior nursing students have hundreds of hours of practice drawing blood on real patients and models. That experience is what 聽motivated the Internal Medicine Interest Group and second-year medical student 聽Errol Inci to reach out to the nursing students for help. 聽鈥淚t鈥檚 a great opportunity to bring the nurses down here and have them teach us a skill that we, as physicians, will rely on every single day,鈥� Errol said. 鈥淭his is a routine, daily procedure that鈥檚 done, so any practice we can get, we want to take part in it.鈥�
Senior nursing student, Geraldine Martinez was excited about the possibility of interprofessional teaching and learning. 聽鈥淲hen I got the invitation from Errol, I felt very privileged and very honored that our future physicians want to learn from their future nurses,鈥� she said. She and four other senior nursing students spent the afternoon teaching first- and second-year M.D. 聽students how to draw blood on some very useful and life-like arm models. The models allow students to train on an anatomically-correct arm, and even draw blood-like fluid from the model鈥檚 veins. Students are able to go through the trial-and-error process of phlebotomy, without actually poking and prodding a real person鈥檚 arm.
The Internal Medicine Interest Group advisers, Drs. Abdo Asmar and Sergio Salazar, helped supervise the 聽interdisciplinary workshop. Both physicians practice at 麻豆原创 Pegasus Health, the College of Medicine physician practice. 鈥淭his is something they can expect to be doing when they graduate: working with other professionals to provide the best patient care,鈥� Dr. Asmar said. “Although the nurses and assistants draw blood most of the time, the doctors can be called on when nobody else can do it.聽 I think it鈥檚 important for physicians to know the technique and be good at it.鈥�
The World Health Organization advocates interprofessional education as a way to improve healthcare for all. The organization defines interprofessional education as an event where two or more professions learn about, from and with each other to enable effective collaboration and聽 improve health outcomes.
The M.D. students will soon find themselves in clerkships where they will work side-by-side with nurses to assist patients. Geraldine said 聽the opportunity to work together as healthcare students provides benefits to both sides. 鈥淭he relationship can start now,鈥� she added. 鈥淚t doesn’t have to be at bedside once we have graduated. Why not start it from the beginning and grow together?鈥�
To watch a video version of this story, please visit