Abstract

Lack of inter-professional collaboration and practice among Health care professionals could impede effective HIV health services delivery leading to poor health outcomes in people living with HIV. Adopting Inter-professional Education by using innovative teaching methods such as the jigsaw technique could foster collaboration among health care professional. The School of Nursing Sciences at the University of Zambia in Lusaka implemented the Strengthening Interprofessional Education for HIV project whose purpose was to integrate innovative approaches that will systematically leverage and strengthen HIV training and professional networks targeted at improving outcomes for people living with HIV. An interactive case based training workshop was conducted with 61 final year undergraduate students from different health professional disciplines at the University of Zambia and Lusaka Apex Medical University in accordance with the jigsaw technique based on cooperate learning. A pre and post-test were administered and data obtained were evaluated using descriptive statistics. From the first training, an improvement was recorded in knowledge scores from 60.5% on pretest to 81.3% on posttest, while an average of 31% improvement was recorded on clinical confidence and inter-professional education. The Jigsaw technique appears to improve knowledge and self-confidence among health care professionals in HIV care. Therefore, inter professional education using the Jigsaw technique could be promoted and in cooperated into the preservice curricular of health care professionals  in order to have strong HIV management teams that could achieve better patient outcomes.

Key words: Inter-professional Education, Impact, HIV course, Jigsaw technique.