Abstract

Objectives This is a survey-based research project to determine students’ from a given healthcare institution: 1. readiness for IPE 2. attitudes toward IPE 3. readiness to teach other providers. 4. readiness to learn from other providers. 5. specialty-specific attitudes toward IPE. 6. relationship between the degree of development of professional identity and attitude toward IPE. 7. optimal number of specialties to participate in an IPE training. 8. intercultural differences regarding IPE. 9. confounding factors that affect readiness for IPE. Method An international group of INHWE members from the United States, Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Sweden, and Poland has developed a 29 item survey to assess readiness healthcare students for IPE. The survey is a modification of the original survey developed by the University of South Dakota Sanford School of Medicine that was designed for assessing medical students. This project’s survey has been modified to be applicable to the other healthcare specialties including nursing, nursing assistant programs, pharmacy, paramedicine, social work, laboratory medicine, respiratory therapy, and physical and occupational therapies. To cover a broad spectrum of international participants, the survey has been translated into eight languages including Albanian, Bulgarian, English, French, Polish, Romanian and Spanish. The survey has been deployed via PsychData in March 2018. Results Collected data identified distinctive trends in the attitudes toward IPE among healthcare professions and variouscultures. Preliminary data analysis demonstrates positive attitudes toward IPE in general, younger students are more open toward IPE that their elder classmates, best time to institute IPE education is the early stage of clinical rotation, students with interest in primary care are more interested in IPE than students with interest in surgical specialties, etc. The research team is currently conducting an in-depth data analysis of the obtained results. Conclusions IPE is an important component of modern healthcare education. It is a common trend in curricula development in many European and North American countries. The data obtained in this project help to overcome challenges and successfully implement IPE in various countries in Europe and North America.