The Nebraska interprofessional education attitudes scale: A new instrument for assessing the attitudes of health professions students

Preliminary testing of psychometric properties of the 'student perceptions of veterinary interprofessional education and work scale' (SP-VIEWS)

Responsibility for the provision of veterinary care and services is increasingly shared between veterinary surgeons/veterinarians and registered veterinary nurses/veterinary technicians. Interprofessional education of these clinical professionals is not widespread but is growing. Understanding students' perceptions of veterinary interprofessional education and working is therefore important; however, no validated scale exists to assess this. This study aimed to create and test the psychometric properties of a 'Student perceptions of veterinary interprofessional education and work scale' (SP-VIEWS). A scale was built using scales previously validated in other contexts, plus statements informed by veterinary interprofessional research, and sent to veterinary and veterinary nursing students at six UK institutions. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) on a randomly-selected half of the responses (n = 260) suggested a model with 16 items grouped within three factors: 'Benefits of learning with the other profession', 'Leadership and speaking up' and 'Teams and benefits of teamwork'. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) on the remaining 260 responses demonstrated appropriate fit based on conventional parameters, such as goodness of fit index. Overall internal consistency was good (Cronbach's alpha 0.82). CFA demonstrated that SP-VIEWS showed adequate, though not excellent, fit to the data. Future research should evaluate SP-VIEWS in other universities and countries.

What participants learn, with, from and about each other during inter-professional education encounters: A qualitative analysis

BACKGROUND

Safe healthcare requires teamwork and collaboration. To meet the needs of healthcare organizations and professionals, inter-professional education, is no longer an optional educational trend but rather a mandate of accrediting health education agencies.

OBJECTIVE

In an effort to better understand the impact of inter- professional educational activities, this study sought to explore via qualitative methods what nursing and medical students learn with, from, and about one another during a week - long simulation-based inter-profession education course.

DESIGN

A convenience sample of post-course survey responses from students participating in a week-long, inter-professional, simulation-based patient safety course was used to longitudinally explore what participants learn with, from, and about each other.

SETTINGS

The setting for this study was a research university located in the southeast United States.

PARTICIPANTS

The participants included a total of 272 second semester accelerated option Bachelor of Nursing students and 599 medical students entering the 3rd year of their program that participated in an annual patient safety course. The study analyzed responses of students to questions in a post-course survey regarding educational outcomes while learning with students from a different profession.

RESULTS

In the responses from 871 students collected over four years, the following key themes emerged. Students: 1) articulated learning the importance of contributions of other professions to the healthcare team, 2) expressed an appreciation for areas where their colleagues' training was superior to their own; and 3) identified deficiencies in their own knowledge and skill sets.

CONCLUSION

The findings of this study provide a basis for developing more specific curricular content as part of inter-professional education endeavors to strengthen constructive views of healthcare professions, foster a more collaborative shared mental model, and to correct perceived misconceptions.

Conceptualizing collaboration in nursing

Nurses practicing at every level need a clear definition of collaboration before applying the concept in daily practice. Additionally, a conceptual definition of collaboration in nursing assists nurse researchers in finding or developing instruments for measuring collaboration and attributes of collaboration, which will enhance research findings. Collaboration extends beyond communication and includes sharing, teamwork, and respect. Multiple databases including CINAHL, PubMed, and ERIC were searched using the keywords collaboration, nursing, concept analysis, sharing, respect, and teamwork. For this analysis, using Walker and Avant's method, the conceptual definition of collaboration in nursing is an intraprofessional or interprofessional process by which nurses come together and form a team to solve a patient care or healthcare system problem with members of the team respectfully sharing knowledge and resources. Two instruments consistent with the conceptual definition of collaboration are The Mayo High Performance Teamwork Scale (MHPTS) and Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety (Team STEPPS) and these instruments are summarized in this study. Finally, case scenarios are given to illustrate exemplars of collaboration in clinical practice.

Characteristics of two questionnaires used to assess interprofessional learning: psychometrics and expert panel evaluations

BACKGROUND

Interprofessional learning activities are included in many curricula but are difficult to assess. For languages that are not widely spoken such as Swedish, few validated questionnaires exist that relate to interprofessional outcomes. Therefore, the aim was to examine two such questionnaires in relation to interprofessional competence domains.

METHODS

Psychometric characteristics, such as homogeneity of items and internal consistency, were assessed for the Swedish versions of the Jefferson Scale of Attitudes Towards Physician-Nurse Collaboration (JSAPNC) and the Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale (RIPLS). The questionnaires were distributed directly following IPL activities. Mokken scale analysis based on Loevinger's coefficient for homogeneity and Cronbach's alpha were used to evaluate the scales. Two expert panels performed a qualitative analysis of items in relation to four internationally defined interprofessional competences.

RESULTS

In total, 88 and 84 responded to the JSAPNC and RIPLS questionnaires, respectively. Estimates of homogeneity were low for both the JSAPNC (H = 0.16) and the RIPLS (H = 0.21). Reliabilities were weak (0.62 and 0.66, respectively) for the total scales. The expert panels categorised 68% of items into similar competence domains. However, their discussion revealed ambiguous wordings and imbalances in the two questionnaires in relation to domains.

CONCLUSION

Interprofessional competence domains are defined but few validated tools exist to assess them. Examined tools relating to interprofessional learning in Swedish do not qualify for assessing overarching IPL outcomes, and summed scores from these tools should be used with caution.