Professional Advancement Through Collaboration and Knowledge Between Nursing and Packaging Students : The PACK Initiative

Abstract

This project aims to enhance learning and foster collaboration between undergraduate prelicensure nursing students and undergraduate packaging students to advance communication skills and professional development in an interprofessional team. The project further aims to promote cross-industry education between packaging and nursing students to contribute to patient safety and improved usability of medical devices in an acute care setting. There is an absence of literature regarding interprofessional collaboration between nursing and packaging majors. To address the gap, an interprofessional team was formed among nursing and packaging students under faculty guidance. Nursing students created two videos specifically for packaging students, which will be embedded in a junior level packaging course. The packaging students are creating an introductory module and packaging kit for nursing students about sterilized medical packaging used in the acute care setting for a junior level undergraduate nursing course. The project's effectiveness will be measured through an evaluation tool administered to students before and after watching the videos and using the kit. Results will be disseminated to nursing and packaging faculty and professionals to inform curriculum and promote patient safety in the acute care setting. The pilot project of five nursing and packaging students at two universities has provided promising insights into raising the visibility of the nursing process to packaging engineers, encouraging students to broaden their perspectives, challenging students to apply core principles into useable designs, and preparing a practice ready workforce.