Self-Rated Interprofessionalism Between Allied Health Professionals

Preventable deaths due to medical errors are a significant cause of death in the United States. Decreased communication and collaboration has been cited as a potential reason for these preventable medical errors. Interprofessional practice (IPP) is a service delivery method where medical professionals from different disciplines intentionally work together in order to provide collaborated and collective care for patients. Interprofessional education (IPE) training programs are becoming more common in healthcare education, and have been cited as one way to improve IPP among healthcare providers. However, gaps exist in the literature regarding how to best structure and implement these programs so that they have the most generalization to actual team based clinical practice. The current study sought to bridge this gap by assessing self-rated IPP behaviors in clinical practice and examining differences between those who engaged in IPE during their graduate training and those who did not. Interprofessionalism survey responses for the final sample consisted of 82 individuals who graduated from the programs of interesting between 2020 and 2023. No significant differences were found between those who participate in IPE and those who did not on the Interprofessional Professionalism Assessment (IPA), an open source survey designed to assess IPP skills. Potential reasons for these findings as well as recommendations for implementation of IPE and future research directions are provided.