Abstract
Purpose: The Interprofessional Education Collaborative introduced specific competencies for interprofessional education to meet the growing need for interprofessional care. These four competencies include teams and teamwork, communication, roles and responsibilities, and values and ethics. With this introduction, a need has emerged for the development of a tool to assess interprofessional proficiency among students in health professions training programs and to evaluate whether such a tool is sensitive to changes in competency as students participate in specific training initiatives. Method: A tool was developed (Interprofessional Education Competency Scale - IPECS) based on the Interprofessional Education Collaborative Competencies and administered to students from five different healthcare professions training programs (graduate psychology, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and physician assistant and undergraduate nursing). Students completed the IPECS prior to any of the training events (Baseline) and after the first event designed to focus on the two competencies of teams and teamwork and communication (Post1) and again after a subsequent event designed to focus on the two competencies of roles and responsibilities and values and ethics (Post2). Results: Student IPECS scores significantly increased across each of the measurement periods. All scales except values and ethics increased from Baseline to Post1 to Post2. Values and ethics scores increased from Post1 to Post2. There were no profession-by-event interactions, thereby indicating that all professions increased at the same rate. Conclusions: The IPECS appears to be a potentially valuable tool for assessment of student development of interprofessional education competencies, being sensitive to apparent changes developed when students engaged in interprofessional activities that focus on interprofessional competencies. And it appears to be able to measure specific changes that occur; scores on the ethics subscale only increased after attending the event focused on ethics. Future research needs to continue to examine psychometric properties of the IPECS and to explore if it is a measurement tool that can be useful for assessment of competencies among practicing professionals. In addition, studies also need to examine if ceiling effects for some questions limit the usefulness of the tool or if those questions can be modified to eliminate possible ceiling effects.
Recommended Citation
Goreczny AJ, Schreiber J, Bednarek ML, Fisher M, Hawkins S, Sterrett S, et al. Assessment of Interprofessional Education Competencies: Evaluation of a New Tool to Assess Sensitivity to Changes Across Training. The Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practice. 2025 Apr 15;23(2), Article 25.
