Faculty Attitudes toward Interprofessional Eduation and Teamwork

The purpose of this presentation is to describe a journey for interprofessional education (IPE) at a health science center (HSC). Barriers for IPE and solutions will be examined. As attitudes of faculty towards IPE and teamwork impacts health professions education students, report on data from a study conducted to evaluate these attitudes will be shared.

Purpose: Needed is the understanding of HSC faculty attitudes toward interprofessional education and teamwork in order to develop targeted faculty development in order to support interprofessional education amongst the health professions.

Problem, Background & Significance: Team-based collaborative care is essential in today’s healthcare environment. While healthcare delivery is a team effort and not a collection of individual efforts, most healthcare professionals are educated in silos. Key to facilitating interprofessional collaboration may to provide targeted faculty development for HSC faculty. It is logical that interprofessional training should occur during the education of healthcare professionals, but the attitudes of the faculty responsible for training healthcare professionals be better understood.

Accrediting bodies across the health professions are requiring iterprofessional education (IPE) (Zorek & Raehl, 2013) and the core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice have been developed to guide implementation by the Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel (ICEP, 2011).

As the attitudes of faculty towards IPE and teamwork impacts health professions education students, the presentation would report on data from a study conducted to evaluate these attitudes. The professions from the HSC perspective include the nursing, medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, and public health.

Research Questions:

RQ1. What linear combination of independent variables predicts health science center faculty attitudes towards interprofessional learning in the healthcare setting?

RQ2. What linear combination of independent variables predicts health science center faculty attitudes towards interprofessional health care teams?

RQ3. What linear combination of independent variables predicts health science center faculty attitudes towards interprofessional education?

References:

Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel. (2011). Core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice: Report of an expert panel. Washington, D.C.: Interprofessional Education Collaborative.

Zorek, J. & Raehl, C. (2013). Interprofessional education accreditation standards in the USA: A comparative analysis. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 27(2), 123-30.