Evaluating the impact of an interprofessional education intervention on health profession students' perceptions and...

With increasing complexity in patient care, IPE has been proposed to improve interprofessional teamwork and improve outcomes. This study was conducted to evaluate the impact of a structured IPE activity on students' collaborative perceptions and competencies.

This study employed a quasi-experimental pre-post intervention design to assess changes in perceptions and self-reported competencies using validated tools (SPICE-R2 and ICCAS). The IPE intervention comprised a full day didactic sessions and case studies. Paired-samples t-tests, repeated measures ANOVA, and MANCOVA were utilized to assess changes and identify predictors.

A total of 182 students (pharmacy: 66.5%, nutrition: 15.9%, and biomedical sciences: 17.6%) were included, with 154 students (84.6%) responding to the postsurvey. The pre-activity total SPICE-R2 score was moderately high (40.81 ± 6.09), and increased significantly to 45.65 ± 5.61 (p < 0.001) post-activity, with all subscales of interprofessional teamwork, roles and responsibilities, and patient outcomes showing significant improvements (p < 0.001). The pre-activity total ICCAS score was moderately high (73.13 ± 7.35), and increased significantly to 87.51 ± 5.25 (p < 0.001) with the greatest gains observed in communication (+ 4.13), conflict resolution (+ 3.04), and team functioning (+ 2.10). Compared with pharmacy students, nutrition students showed greater improvements in both SPICE-R2 (B = 9.193, p < 0.001) and ICCAS (B = 6.605, p = 0.007) scores. Students with prior health education and IPE exposure reported greater improvements in both SPICE-R2 and ICCAS scores (p < 0.05). Conversely, clinical employment significantly predicted lower gains on the SPICE-R2 (B=-3.136, p = 0.047).

The intervention led to significant improvements in interprofessional collaborative perceptions and competencies. Future longitudinal evaluations are needed to assess sustained impact and transfer to clinical practice.