I would like to thank Horsley et al1 for their thought-provoking article, "Developing a Foundation for Interprofessional Education Within Nursing and Medical Curricula." This article provides a stimulating discussion of how interprofessional collaboration can improve patient outcomes and satisfaction. I have personally seen the importance of learning with other health care students, especially medical students. One of the biggest strengths of this study is that both nursing and medical students had already had didactic and clinical experience when they were paired together in an interprofessional education (IPE) simulation experience. I firmly believe that nursing and medical students can and should learn together, ideally when they are in similar stages of their curriculum to provide an educational experience in which both groups can work as a team and not a hierarchy.

In my program, we take courses including dedicated IPE courses with other health care professionals such as occupational therapy, physical therapy, and athletic training beginning in our first year. Not until our fourth and final year do we start interacting with medical students. As senior nursing students, we have already completed approximately 1000 hours of direct clinical experience and have worked in a variety of settings while the medical students are in their first year, which is solely didactic learning. This can create tension and conflicting ideas such as when we worked together on patient cases. The medical students had idealistic expectations because of their lack of clinical experience.

Although there was a difference in clinical perspectives, my experience was still beneficial because we practiced working as a team regarding a patient. We also had the opportunity to discuss effective communication and barriers to address to best serve our patients. There was emphasis on nurses speaking up and physicians listening to nurses in return. IPE can provide a strong foundation to decrease hierarchy mindsets and misconceptions about different professionals. Clearly more research needs to be done to better understand the best way to achieve this goal. As other studies have shown, to increase the effectiveness of IPE, students from differing fields need to have a coordinated curriculum and schedules with planning done in advance.2 Consideration should be given to where in the curriculum students should work together and the extent of their experiences working together.

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