4 65 How does IPE influence students’ perceptions of collaboration? in the following section. We will also discuss how each theme reflects an increase in social capital. 1. Exchange of discipline-specific knowledge Some students learned specific knowledge from the other discipline, that they can apply in clinical practice. The ‘discipline-specific knowledge’ in this theme mainly concerns basic facts that are known by the other professional (e.g., the meaning of medical terms for nursing students). Sometimes it also concerns some background information about the clinical relevance of these basic facts, (e.g., why a specific diagnostic test is requested). This acquisition of discipline specific knowledge seems to appear primarily to nursing students. ‘They have all explained the abbreviations of the laboratory diagnostics, in an understandable way’. (Student no.20-nursing) ‘For example, medication. Why and when you prescribe it to a patient. And why you will choose an alternative. That’s what I found interesting, how they make those choices’. (Student no.5-nursing) The acquisition of knowledge of the other profession is also an increase of social capital, while students have more access to (different) knowledge resources. This form of increased social capital reflects ‘bridging social capital’, since students experience that the other student is from a different group. In the quote below, a student points out that this acquisition and sharing of knowledge can also result in ‘getting ahead’ (i.e., ‘doing better’), which is also an important effect of increased social capital. ‘That you benefit from each other, I mean you can come up with different things. That was informative. I think I wouldn’t have done as well, if I had done it on my own’. (Student no.4-medical) 2. Understanding own and other’s responsibilities Getting to know each other’s responsibilities was an important experience in the IPE-sessions for students. Several students stated that that experience was the most important effect of the IPE-sessions. This theme is connected to the first, while both represent learning from each other’s discipline-specific knowledge. However, the second theme involves more than the factual knowledge as described in the first theme. Students used the discipline-specific knowledge to construct a more general vision about their own and the other’s responsibilities.
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