Development of a conceptual model for the evaluation of inter-professional education

Abstract

Background: Inter-professional education (IPE) engages students from different healthcare professions for learning with, from and about each other to improve collaboration and quality of care (El-Awaisi et al., 2016). A systematic literature review suggested that studies on IPE report positive outcomes when teaching pre-clinical students from medicine and other healthcare professions (Vuurberg et al., 2019). This study is part of a two-year pedagogy research project, assessing the impact of IPE on medicine, nursing, pharmacy and physiotherapy students.
Aim: To develop a conceptual model for evaluating IPE using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).
Method: Participants of the IPE session were invited to fill the RIPLS questionnaire (McFadyen et al., 2005) online, using Qualtrics.
The conceptual model tested 5 hypotheses. What was the impact of:
- H1:positive attitude towards team-working on shared learning?
- H2: positive attitude towards team-working on team-working?
- H3: negative attitude towards team-working on team-working?
- H4: negative attitude towards team-working on shared learning?
- H5: team-working on shared learning?

The analysis was conducted using SmartPLS3 following the procedure suggested by Sarstedt et al. (2016). The study received ethics approval (Ref. HEALTH 0029).
Results: Thirty-four students attended the IPE session: 20 from pharmacy, 7 medicine, 4 nursing, 3 physiotherapy. Fourteen students were in 2nd year, 10 in 3rd, 8 in 5th, 2 in 1st. Four path coefficients in the structural model were positive, one negative (H1:β=0.464, p<0.001; H2:β=0.884, p<0.002; H3:β=0.014, p<0.963; H4: β=-0.109, p=0.300; H5: β=0.495, p<0.001) (Figure
1). The model presented substantial explanatory power for shared learning (R2=0.940, p<0.001) and team working (R2=0.775, p<0.001); it did not fully achieve discriminant validity but showed a good fit (SRMR=0.083).
Conclusion: The study represents one of the first attempts to develop a conceptual model using PLS-SEM to evaluate an IPE session; the limitation of the model is the small sample size.