Assessing the assessment: a comparison of the IPASS and ICCAS to measure change in interprofessional competencies following a large-scale interprofessional forum

Measuring the effectiveness of interprofessional education (IPE) experiences is essential but challenging. Surveying learners before (pretest) and after (posttest) an IPE experience may result in minimal change due to response shift bias. Retrospective pretest/posttest assessment may ameliorate response shift bias but may also result in inflated change scores due to social desirability bias. We studied a cohort of 675 students from 12 health professions who completed the Interprofessional Attitudes Scale (IPAS) within the 4 weeks before (pretest) and the 3 weeks after (posttest) an IPE forum and completed the Interprofessional Collaborative Competency Attainment Survey (ICCAS) within the 3 weeks after the forum as a retrospective pretest/posttest. We found higher scores on the pretest IPAS than the retrospective pretest ICCAS and greater change in scores on the ICCAS than the IPAS, indicating potential response shift and social desirability biases. Furthermore, we found few significant correlations between change scores in subscales of the two tests, but a high number of strong and significant correlation among the ICCAS subscale change scores. Our results indicate the timing of pretest administration may impact change scores or that subscales of IPAS may be more unique than those of ICCAS. These findings suggest that educators should consider the potential impact of response shift and social desirability biases when interpreting results of the IPAS and ICCAS in response to an IPE learning experience.

Mitochondrial E3 Ubiquitin Ligase Parkin: Relationships with Other Causal Proteins in Familial Parkinson's Disease and Its Substrate-Involved Mouse Experimental Models

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disorder. Recent identification of genes linked to familial forms of PD has revealed that post-translational modifications, such as phosphorylation and ubiquitination of proteins, are key factors in disease pathogenesis. In PD, E3 ubiquitin ligase Parkin and the serine/threonine-protein kinase PTEN-induced kinase 1 (PINK1) mediate the mitophagy pathway for mitochondrial quality control via phosphorylation and ubiquitination of their substrates. In this review, we first focus on well-characterized PINK1 phosphorylation motifs. Second, we describe our findings concerning relationships between Parkin and HtrA2/Omi, a protein involved in familial PD. Third, we describe our findings regarding inhibitory PAS (Per/Arnt/Sim) domain protein (IPAS), a member of PINK1 and Parkin substrates, involved in neurodegeneration during PD. IPAS is a dual-function protein involved in transcriptional repression of hypoxic responses and the pro-apoptotic activities.