Experimental tutoring project: from guidelines to clinical practice

Promote interdisciplinary tutoring activities in order to teach students how to work in team developing trans-skill competences. Actively involve patients in the construction and management of the assistential and rehabilitative activities to improve adherence and compliance. At Salerno University an experimental pedagogy project involved third-year students attending the Degree Course in Physiotherapy, Nursing, and the fifth year of Medicine, who performed a professionalized clinical internship at the Complex Operative Unit (UOC) of Cardiac Rehabilitation (CR), University Hospital “San Giovanni di Dio Ruggi d’Aragona” in Salerno. We divided students (60) and patients (100) in two groups, experimental and control one, each of them composed by 30 students and 50 cardio-operated patients. Patients are entrusted to an interdisciplinary team of tutors and students, guided by a team-leader chosen in rotation between students. After defining the patient’s need for care and rehabilitation, customized programs were designed, encouraging an active participation of the patient. We gave a self-assessment questionnaire to students for learned skill assessment and a rating scale for adherence and compliance evaluation to patients. Clinical internship has favoured the construction of relationship between students of the various disciplines who learned to dialogue together about the centrality of the patient. This experience has favoured a real change in the lifestyle of patients. We hope that this modality can be used also in other UOC involving a raising number of students, tutors, and patients since the modern literature has also concluded that integrated didactic is an inescapable necessity.