Abstract
Teaching interprofessional teamwork skills is a
goal of interprofessional education. The purpose of this
study was to examine the relationship between IP teamwork
skills, attitudes and clinical outcomes in a simulated
clinical setting. METHODS: One hundred-twenty health
professions students (medicine, pharmacy, physician assistant)
worked in interprofessional teams to manage a
“patient” in a health care simulation setting. Students completed
the Interdisciplinary Education Perception Scale
(IEPS) attitudinal survey instrument. Students’ responses
were averaged by team to create an IEPS attitudes score.
Teamwork skills for each team were rated by trained
observers using a checklist to calculate a teamwork score
(TWS). Clinical outcome scores (COS) were determined
by summation of completed clinical tasks performed by the
team based on an expert developed checklist. Regression
analyses were conducted to determine the relationship of
IEPS and TWS with COS. RESULTS: IEPS score was not a
significant predictor of COS (p=0.054), but TWS was a significant
predictor (p< 0.001) of COS. Results suggest that
in a simulated clinical setting, students’ interprofessional
teamwork skills are significant predictors of positive clinical
outcomes. CONCLUSION: Interprofessional curricular
models that produce effective teamwork skills can improve
student performance in clinical environments and likely
improve teamwork practice to positively affect patient care
outcomes.
Description
This is the published version. Copyright 2013 Journal of Allied Health.