Level of Understanding among Health Professions Students about Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice

Abstract

Background: Inter-professional education occurs when two or more professions learn with from and about each other in order to improve collaboration and the quality of practice. Methods: The study investigated difference in attitudes expressed by health profession students about inter-professional education and collaborative practice. A cross sectional study was presented in this study. Materials: In quantitative study, a self- administrative questionnaire used in this study. Descriptive statistics was calculated by baseline demographic and related factors of inter-professional education and collaborative practice. All statistical analysis conducted using IBM SPSS version 23 (IBM cooperation, Chicago, IL, USA) with alpha set at p0.05.The chi-square test (χ²) also called Pearson’s chi-square test of association, was used to discover if there is a association between two categorical variables. In addition, Kruscull-Wallis H test was done to identify difference in level of understanding about Inter-professional education and collaborative practice among the different kind of health profession student. Results: The overall understanding of inter-professional education and collaboration score is high. The overall perception of IPE and collaboration among four domains shows that high level (75.01-100) of Perception of Inter-Professional Relationship among health profession students’ (74.9); Inter-professional Relationship with other health profession student’ (57.6); Perception of Inter-Professional Relationship with Peers’ (76.4); Perception of Importance about Inter-Professional Education with health profession students, (77.5). However, there is significant association of age and department of the participants. Conclusion: Inter-professional education develops the student’s competency about their own profession and build up the mutual respect to other profession. It also emphasis on providing continuous support to cooperate with others for developing self-competencies.