Effect of Interprofessional Clinical Debates on Attitudes of Interprofessional Teams

Current evidence supports the notion of debates as a pedagogical method to teach literature evaluation skills in health care education; however, there are no reports of this method as an interprofessional approach and its potential benefits. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of interprofessional clinical debates on attitudes toward interprofessional teamwork and perceived literature evaluation skills.

We invited third-year family medicine residents and fourth-year pharmacy students to complete a survey before and after participating in an interprofessional clinical debate. The anonymous survey was composed of the Students' Perceptions of Interprofessional Clinical Education-Revised (SPICE-R2) instrument to evaluate perceptions of interprofessional teamwork, literature evaluation, and other skills gained through the process. We evaluated matched responses for change in attitudes toward interprofessional teams.

We evaluated 41 matched responses, which indicated improvement in attitudes toward interprofessional teams and was statistically significant ( P<.001). This finding held true for subscales of roles/responsibilities for collaborative practice and patient outcomes from collaborative practice (P<.001). Participants also perceived improvements in literature evaluation, problem-solving, critical thinking, teamwork, and communication skills.

The interprofessional clinical debate activity positively impacted medical residents and pharmacy students, and improved attitudes toward interprofessional teams.