The Effect of a Sepsis Interprofessional Education Using Virtual Patient Telesimulation on Sepsis Team Care in Clinical Practice: Mixed Methods Study

Improving interprofessional communication and collaboration is necessary to facilitate the early identification and treatment of patients with sepsis. Preparing undergraduate medical and nursing students for the knowledge and skills required to assess, escalate, and manage patients with sepsis is crucial for their entry into clinical practice. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing measures have created the need for interactive distance learning to support collaborative learning. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of sepsis interprofessional education on medical and nursing students' sepsis knowledge, team communication skills, and skill use in clinical practice. A mixed methods design using a 1-group pretest-posttest design and focus group discussions was used. This study involved 415 undergraduate medical and nursing students from a university in Singapore. After a baseline evaluation of the participants' sepsis knowledge and team communication skills, they underwent didactic e-learning followed by virtual telesimulation on early recognition and management of sepsis and team communication strategies. The participants' sepsis knowledge and team communication skills were evaluated immediately and 2 months after the telesimulation. In total, 4 focus group discussions were conducted using a purposive sample of 18 medical and nursing students to explore their transfer of learning to clinical practice. Compared with the baseline scores, both the medical and nursing students demonstrated a significant improvement in sepsis knowledge (P