Interprofessional education in a community-based setting: An opportunity for interprofessional learning and...

Area of Science:

• Health Professions Education
• Interprofessional Education
• Community Health

Background:

• Interprofessional community-based education prepares learners for professional responsibilities and teamwork in community settings.
• It offers practical situations for developing essential collaborative skills.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the impact of interprofessional community-based education on learners' attitudes and performance.
• To evaluate the effect on readiness for interprofessional learning and collaboration.

Main Methods:

• A quasi-experimental design involved 122 learners from medicine, pharmacy, nursing, midwifery, public health, and nutrition.
• Intervention included familiarization with interprofessional collaboration concepts and community-based team activities teaching health topics.
• Data were collected via pre- and post-intervention questionnaires and analyzed using Student's t-test and ANOVA.

Main Results:

• Learners showed significant improvements in readiness for interprofessional learning (3.82 to 4.60, P=0.0001).
• Attitudes toward interprofessional teamwork (3.83 to 4.18, P=0.0001) and collaboration performance (7.46 to 8.35, P=0.001) also significantly improved.

Conclusions:

• Interprofessional community-based education effectively enhances learners' readiness for interprofessional learning.
• The education model positively impacts attitudes towards teamwork and improves interprofessional collaboration performance.