Development of a questionnaire to assess interprofessional collaboration between two different care levels

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Management
• Clinical Psychology
• Health Services Research

Background:

• Assessing interprofessional collaboration is crucial for integrated care models.
• Existing tools may not capture clinician perceptions across different care levels.
• The public Basque Health Service sought a validated instrument for monitoring integrated care pilots.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a questionnaire assessing interprofessional collaboration.
• To evaluate clinicians' perceptions of collaboration between primary and specialized care.
• To create a reliable instrument for integrated care pilot evaluation.

Main Methods:

• Four-phase development process: initial drafting, content validation, pre-testing, and construct validity/homogeneity evaluation.
• Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was employed for structural validation.
• Cronbach's alpha and correlation coefficients were calculated to assess reliability and homogeneity.

Main Results:

• The questionnaire demonstrated appropriate theoretical content with clear, relevant, and intelligible items.
• Confirmatory factor analysis yielded excellent fit indices (RMSEA=0.043, GFI=0.92, CFI=0.99).
• Statistical analysis supported a robust two-factor structure underlying collaboration.

Conclusions:

• The validated questionnaire exhibits good psychometric properties for assessing interprofessional collaboration.
• The findings suggest that both interpersonal relationships and organizational factors are key to collaboration.
• This instrument provides a valid measure for evaluating collaboration in multi-level healthcare settings.