The need for medical team care is increasing because of advances in medical care and changing national needs. For more than 20 years medical students at the University of Tsukuba have participated in medical team care practice before bedside learning during the third trimester of their 4th year. The objective of this practice is to understand patients from the nurses' point of view and to learn cooperation between doctors and co-medical staff. We analyzed students reports to study what they had learned. A total of 326 items in 11 categories were specified in the free-response part of the reports. The largest category was “nursing/nurses” and the second largest was “communication/human relations.” The results show that the students learned points other than the General Instruction Objectives and that the practice was extremely effective.

Although attempts to teach medical students about nursing have become more frequent, nurses who have lectured to medical students and have been involved in their practical training have rarely published studies evaluating their training methods and objectives. This study was performed to clarify the significance and problems of such teaching. Nurses now participate in the education and training of medical students in at least half of medical training hospitals and schools. They thought that this is a unique and beneficial educational opportunity and had high expectations. However, four main problems have been identified: the motivation and attitudes of medical students, the time and environment for training, the understanding of clinicians, and the problems of nurses, such as lack of educational experience.