Attitudes toward interprofessional healthcare teams: A comparison between undergraduate students and alumni

Abstract

The goal of effective interprofessional education (IPE) is high-quality patient-care delivery and attaining a high level of patient satisfaction in clinical settings. We aimed to examine if alumni who have studied in an IPE program at a pre-licensure stage maintain a positive attitude toward collaborative practice (CP) in the postgraduate clinical experience. This paper presents a cross-sectional descriptive study which employed the modified attitudes toward health care teams scale (ATHCTS) to examine the relationship between exposure to clinical practice and the attitudes toward interprofessional healthcare teams. Results indicated that the overall mean score of alumni was significantly lower than that of undergraduate students on the modified ATHCTS. Only "team efficacy" had a significantly lower regression factor score in alumni than undergraduate students. Our findings suggest that changes in professional identity in a team may be due to contact with patients after graduation in the postgraduate clinical healthcare experience. The reduction of attitudes toward healthcare teams in the postgraduate clinical experience may be related to "team efficacy". We emphasize the need for in-service IPE for sustaining attitudes and providing a useful CP, which results in good clinical outcome.

A BEME systematic review of the effects of interprofessional education: BEME Guide No. 39

“…From this growing amount of empirical work, it is possible to see that IPE can have a beneficial impact on learners' attitudes, knowledge, skills and behaviours -also termed as collaborative competencies (Abu-Rish et al 2012;Makino et al, 2013). In addition, evidence is growing which suggests that IPE can also positively affect the professional practice as well as improve clinical outcomes (Kent & Keating 2013;Reeves et al 2013).…”

Repeated cross-sectional study of the longitudinal changes in attitudes toward interprofessional health care teams amongst undergraduate students

“…Change in the mean scores of each item was examined in the three subscales. Item's number was identified as described previously (Makino et al, 2013). Since regression factor scores indicate relative placement on an identified factor using more sophisticated approaches (DiStefano, Zhu, & Mindrila, 2010), regression factor scores were obtained to support the results from the examination of change in the mean scores of each item.…”

“…The 14-item questionnaire, in which items containing the word ''physician'' have been removed from the original questionnaire, is a modified version adapted by Curran, Sharpe, and Forristall (2007) to measure attitudes toward health care teams. The mATHCTS was used for data collection, since it has been applied for a wide variety of health professions (Curran et al, 2007;Hayashi et al, 2012;Makino et al, 2013). This 14-item questionnaire was used to measure attitudes toward health care teams and uses a 5-point Likert scale from one (strongly disagree) to five (strongly agree).…”

“…Hayashi et al (2012) evaluated CP-and IPE-attitude responses to these two different learning styles separately using common assessment tools cross-sectionally; modified Attitudes Toward Health Care Teams Scale (mATHCTS) and the modified Readiness of health care students for Interprofessional Learning Scale (mRIPLS), and revealed that third-year students' scores were significantly increased in response to training-style IPE class, whereas the first-year students' scores were significantly decreased after the lecture-style IPE class. On the other hand, the overall scores of alumni have recently been shown to be significantly lower than those of undergraduate students who had just finished the training-style program on the mATHCTS cross-sectionally (Makino et al, 2013).…”

How do we develop health educators for the future using an interprofessional approach?

“…Individuals' training in each profession tends to be nurtured in relatively sequestered isolation from their fellow students in other health professions from the outset, leading to strong identification with one's own profession and a corresponding reluctance to engage with other professions (Stull & Blue, 2016). Even after the point of registration and the entry proper in to the clinical environment, too frequently there is a retreat back to the familiarity of the silo for postgraduate training and continuing professional development (Makino et al, 2013).…”