Using expert judgement to define minimum standards for ensuring interprofessional education on training wards

The number of interprofessional training wards (ITWs), which differ in their local specifics, is growing world-wide. Quality management of interprofessional education (IPE) on ITWs depends on the commitment of the local people involved. Literature addressing issues of quality assurance of ITWs is missing. Thus, minimum standards were defined in a multi-stage approach involving 24 experts and different methods. From 45 quality criteria, local experts first derived and consented on Mannheim's draft of 26 minimum standards following the SHELF protocol. Next, external experts validated and commented on the proposed minimum standards in an online survey. Agreement levels varied (64%-100%). Collaborative inductive content analysis of the comments contributed to refine the final wording of the recommended location-independent minimum standards. A trial with our ITW indicated which minimum standards were met completely, partially, or not at all. Expert judgment from different ITW expert groups were valuable for obtaining meaningful and precisely worded minimum standards. While majority votes gave an indication, deliberative discussions proved to be decisive to arrive at "wise" expert-based outcomes. The checklist of the recommended minimum standards is easy to use for (re)assessing the quality of IPE on ITWs and can serve as a benchmark to make IPE on ITWs comparable.