Original Article
The Nebraska interprofessional education attitudes scale: A new instrument for assessing the attitudes of health professions students

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xjep.2016.05.001Get rights and content

Abstract

Background

Interprofessional education (IPE) for health professions students can facilitate collaboration. Previous instruments to measure student attitudes about IPE were reported to lack psychometric and validity evidence.

Methods

The Nebraska Interprofessional Education Attitude Scale (NIPEAS) was developed to measure the attitudes of pre-clinical learners to practicing health professionals. The 19 item questionnaire was administered in 2012 to 370 students, in 2013 to 280 faculty, and in 2015 to 353 students.

Results

An exploratory factor analysis found that NIPEAS items loaded onto four factors: “Team approach to health care,” “Receptivity to teammates,” “Self-efficacy as a team member” and “Ethics in health care.” Confirmatory factor analysis suggested that the four-factor model for NIPEAS provided an adequate fit to the data.

Conclusions

The attitude scales in NIPEAS were derived from the IPEC competencies. NIPEAS appears to be useful for measuring attitudes about interprofessional collaboration of pre-service health professions students and health care providers.

Section snippets

Background/rationale

The U.S. health care system ranks near the bottom among developed countries on nearly every health care parameter.1, 2 Interprofessional collaboration and teamwork have been advocated as an essential remedy to improve the quality of patient care, lower costs, decrease length of stay and reduce medical errors.3 However, preparation of future health care professionals with new ways of relating to one another and new skills requires interprofessional learning approaches.2 Interprofessional

Instrument development

During the spring and summer of 2011, a literature review of existing instruments for interprofessional attitudes among health professions students was conducted. Concurrently, the UNMC IPE-CC adopted IPE competencies to refine the interprofessional curriculum objectives. The adopted competencies were based on the Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice.14

An interprofessional group of health care educators at UNMC selected the sub-set of IPEC Competencies14 which were

Results

In 2012, 370 of the 472 students who participated in the IPE event completed the NIPEAS (79% response rate). 280 faculty members representing all colleges on campus completed the survey (52.8% from the College of Medicine) in the Spring 2013. In 2015, 353 students completed the NIPEAS (69% response rate) (Table 3). NIPEAS items were completed using a 5-point Likert scale of Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. Descriptive statistics for NIPEAS items are displayed in Table 4.

Principal components

Discussion

The publication of IPEC Competencies in 201114 made it possible for the first time to create an attitude measurement instrument for IPE that derived construct validity from a comprehensive, widely-accepted conceptual framework. This fact, in addition to reported deficiencies in previous IPE measurement instruments, led us to develop the NIPEAS as an instrument that was appropriate for pre-service learners which would measure attitudes toward interprofessional collaboration. Our objective was to

Conclusion

Validity evidence collected for the NIPEAS indicates this instrument is useful for measuring attitudes of matriculating students as well as practicing health care professionals. The construct validity for NIPEAS items was derived from IPEC competencies and the internal reliability was adequate. Additionally, internal structure validity evidence also support use of NIPEAS to measure attitudes of health sciences professionals.

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