Research in Brief: Exploring Perceptions of Needs for the Same Patient Across Disciplines Using Mixed Reality: A Pilot Study

Abstract

Interprofessional communication is important in health care; however, health disciplines are often taught in silos and in different ways. Clinical judgement is often taught in discipline-specific models, which has the potential to create different perceptions of needs between disciplines. A mixed reality (MR) simulation was used to explore clinical judgement through the perceptions of needs that different health professional students formulate after a visual assessment of the same patient. Thirteen health care students from four disciplines (medicine, nursing, occupational therapy, and dietetics) in their last six months of training completed the MR experience. Directed content analysis was used to analyse the data. Pain was consistently recognised as a patient need; however, the focus of perceptions of need differed between disciplines. MR provided a consistent method by which different disciplines could examine the same patient in the same circumstances.