TverrProf – an interdisciplinary health- and social professions education research group

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TverrProf – an interdisciplinary health- and social professions education research group

 

TverrProf investigates questions of cross-professional interest for the health and social professions education programmes and is mainly concerned with professional identities, both in each individual profession and across the whole of the health- and social professions. The TverrProf research group has organisational roots in the Department of Circulation and medical imaging (ISB)/section of Radiographer education, but is an interdisciplinary and cross-faculty group composed of employees from various fields and departments.

Research activity

Health- and social workers' development of professional identity during their education and is essential for future professional practice. During identity formation, the student incorporates the expectations, responsibilities and obligations crucial to their professional role, thereby building their confidence for future work as a qualified practitioner. At the same time, the student is trained in interdisciplinary collaboration and develops an interprofessional identity as a team worker aiming at a comprehensive patient- or user-centred practice. Therefore, an objective for TverrProf is to study factors that over time, contribute to developing uni- and interprofessional identity. Both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods are applied.

Current project:

Professional identity in health and social professional education

The purpose is to study the development and relationship between psychological safety and uni- and inter-professional identity among health and social profession students at NTNU, and how and to what extent these variables influence each other over time.

The project is a longitudinal cohort study in which students from 12 different health and social profession programmes at NTNU answer a questionnaire once per year for the duration of their studies. The project links questionnaire data and registered data of students' marks and study progress. In addition, approximately 15 students from the first year of study, 15 halfway through their studies (i.e., 2nd or 4th year students), and 15 students from the last year of study, are interviewed to provide further qualitative understanding.  The data collection started in the spring of 2022 and continues through the spring of 2027.

The data collection for first-year students takes place in the autumn semester, while for the rest, data is collected during the spring. Changes are measured by cross-sectional data from the 1st, 2nd and 3rd years of the bachelor programmes and the 4th, 5th and 6th years of the 6-year professional programmes, in addition to longitudinal data from the spring of 2022 and after 3 or 6 years.

The study was approved by the Faculty Deans and by the Heads of the involved study programmes. It has also been approved by NSD.