Role perceptions of freshman and senior nursing and medical students and attitudes toward collaborative decision making.

David Kolb's (1981) experiential learning theory was used to examine differences between first- and fourth-year nursing and medical students' perceptions of competencies important for nursing and medicine. A convenience sample of nursing (n = 109) and medical (n = 108) students from a large Canadian research university was surveyed. Respondents completed the Environmental Press Questionnaire, the Adaptive Competency Scale, and a 6-item measure of attitudes toward collaborative nurse-physician patient care decision making. Nursing students' perceptions of competencies important for medicine were found to be more congruent with medical students' perceptions of these competencies than were medical students' perceptions of competencies important for nursing as seen by nursing students. Gaps in perceptions of each others' roles were significantly negatively related to attitudes toward collaborative patient care decision making.