Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Medical Education, Educational Developmental Center, Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran, Medical Education Department, School of Public Health, Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran

2 Department of Sports and Exercise Medicine, School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

BACKGROUND: An interprofessional community‑based education provides proper situations
that learners can be prepared to play their professional responsibilities and team duties in the
community. This study aims to assess the effect of interprofessional community‑based education
on attitudes and performances of learners toward interprofessional collaboration and their readiness
for interprofessional learning.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study is a quasi‑experimental design. The learners in six different
disciplines, including medicine, pharmacy, nursing, midwifery, public health, and nutrition (n=122) at
Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences were participated in the present study. in the present
study, interprofessional education intervention was conducted in two steps. First, the interprofessional
learning situation brought learners the familiarity with the concepts of interprofessional collaboration,
teamwork, and educational medical content, such as backache, fatty liver, diabetes, and HIV. Second,
learners from different disciplines participated in interprofessional teams in community settings. These
learners taught people about health‑related topics, such as backache, fatty liver, and HIV. Participants
filled out the questionnaires before and after interventions. Data were analyzed by Student’s t‑test
and one‑way ANOVA in SPSS 16.0 software (SPSS, Inc., Chicago, IL, USA).
RESULTS: The present results showed that the scores of learners in readiness for interprofessional
learning 3.82 (0.35) versus 4.60 (0.29) (P = 0.001) (P = 0.0001), attitudes to interprofessional teamwork
3.83 (0.40) versus 4.18 (0.30) (P = 0.0001) (P = 0.0001), interprofessional collaboration 7.46 (0.70)
versus 8.35 (0.43) (P = 0.001) improved significantly before and after the educational interventions.
CONCLUSION: The present results showed that interprofessional community‑based education
has improved the readiness of the learners for interprofessional learning. Besides, attitude toward
teamwork and interprofessional collaboration performance have also been improved from participants’
viewpoints.

Keywords

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