Assessment interprofessional communication skills in primary health care team in Isfahan

Interprofessional communication is viewed as an important precursor to developing healthcare professionals. The purpose of this study was to examine the predictive ability of influence factors for interprofessional communication behavior among health care team members.

This descriptive-analytical study has a cross-sectional design and was conducted in 2023. A self-administered questionnaire survey was sent to a random sample of 450 health team workers, including physicians, nurses, nutritionists, health care experts, and psychologists, based in many public health centers in Isfahan. The questionnaire included questions on attitudes, role transparency, mutual respect and trust, communicative barriers, self-efficacy, and communicative behavior. Descriptive statistics, t tests, and Chi-square tests were performed with SPSS 24.0 for Windows. α was considered to be 0.05.

Based on the analysis of the results, among the demographic variables, only age showed a significant relationship with mutual respect and trust. The average scores of attitude and self-efficacy among the study subjects were 34.25 ± 5.54 and 39.80 ± 6.7, respectively, and the average score of barriers to effective communication with colleagues was 12.35 ± 3.06. There was a significant positive relationship between the mutual respect (P = 0.038) and self-efficacy scores (P = 0.046) and the communication behavior score (P = 0.01). In addition, there was a significant inverse relationship between barriers to effective communication with colleagues and self-efficacy and communication behavior (P = 0.01).

Since self-efficacy is the most important influencing factor in interprofessional communication skills, designing educational interventions based on self-efficacy is recommended.