The development and validation of a new interprofessional team approach evaluation scale

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Research
• Family Medicine
• Health Services Research

Background:

• Interprofessional teamwork is crucial for effective patient care in family medicine.
• Existing tools may not adequately capture patient perspectives on family medicine team performance.
• Evaluating patient satisfaction with interprofessional care is essential for quality improvement.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a patient-centered scale for assessing interprofessional teamwork in family medicine.
• To provide a reliable instrument for measuring patient satisfaction with family medicine teams.
• To identify key domains of patient experience with interprofessional family medicine care.

Main Methods:

• A descriptive study employing a three-phase approach: literature review, consensus development panels, and cross-sectional validation.
• Consensus development involved three rounds to refine the initial scale.
• A cross-sectional validation study included 3,292 patients from Slovenian family medicine practices.

Main Results:

• The final 9-item scale demonstrated high reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.901).
• Factor analysis identified two key factors: Team Approach and Person-Centered Approach, explaining 68.6% of the variance.
• The study successfully validated a new scale for evaluating patient satisfaction with interprofessional family medicine teams.

Conclusions:

• A novel, validated scale provides a patient's perspective on interprofessional family medicine team care.
• Findings underscore the importance of both team dynamics and patient-centeredness in family medicine.
• The study highlights the need for developing family medicine interprofessional team competency frameworks and assessment tools.