Contributing Factors of Acceptance and Rejection to Interprofessional Education: Undergraduate Students’ Perception

Abstract

Interprofessional education (IPE) is considered to be a way to introduce health profession students on the importance of teamwork in providing excellent healthcare services. There has been no report that explores students’ perception toward IPE before implementation of the program. This study aimed to examine the factors that might affect students’ attitude towards IPE and explore the underlying reasons of their attitude. The population of this study was students of final year of preclinical program of Medicine, nursing, dentistry and midwifery of Sultan Agung Islamic University (Unissula) Indonesia. Attitudes towards IPE were collected by questionnaire adapted from RIPL which has been validated with alpha Cronbach 0.885. The quantitative data were analyzed using multivariate logistic regression. Uni-profession FGs were conducted to explore the underlying reason of students’ attitude toward IPE. Qualitative data were evaluated by two experts in medical education with the help of ATLAS Ti software. The data were evaluated from 389 students. Of this total, 210 (52.8 %) of them had RIPL score low–moderate. Students’ health professional program (RR=15.99 CI95%=6.18-41.43,p= 0.000 ) and GPA (RR=2.76 CI95%= 1.54-4.92 p=0.001) were the most dominant variable of the readiness to IPE. Qualitative data revealed that motivation to enhance knowledge and clinical skills and desire to discuss the roles and responsibilities of each profession were the main reasons for students’ approval to IPE. Conversely a lack of confidence and role blurring were the reasons for rejecting IPE program.

Keywords

• Interprofessional education (IPE)
• Readiness for interprofessional Learning Scale (RIPL)
• Learners’ background
• Learners’ perceptions