Attitude of health science students towards interprofessional education

Introduction/aim: The World Health Organization initiated interprofessional education as a supplementary learning method to traditional education models with an aim of a better and more comprehensive approach to patients' needs. The strategy has been applied in several European countries in spite of existing obstacles and difficulties. Overcoming of structural and organizational obstacles to implementing interprofessional learning is quite hard, but the negative student attitudes are the most difficult to change. In that respect, the aim of this study was to assess the attitude of students towards the interprofessional learning method. Method: The cross-sectional investigation was carried out at the Faculty of Medicine Novi Sad by interviewing students. The investigated population encompassed students of two study programs: undergraduate academic nursing study (n=52) and integrated academic studies in medicine (n=53). The inclusion criteria for participation in this poll were attendance at the clinical core and completed lecture on interprofessional learning. The questionnaire entitled Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale -RIPLS was applied. The data were processed using appropriate mathematical statistics methods. Results: Cronbach's alpha of the whole questionnaire was 0.84. Majority of students of both study programs reported positive attitude towards interprofessional education. Almost all students indicated the need of acquiring basic teamworking skills and communication before graduation, through shared learning. Both medicine- and nursing students emphasized that learning together and mutual solving clinical problems during interprofessional education would be beneficial to patient care. Multivariate and univariate techniques and discriminant analysis revealed significant difference between attitudes of medicine students and nursing students with respect to responses in the three subscales. The strongest difference was observed in the subscale Roles and Responsibilities. Conclusion: Interprofessional education is not easily implementable into the existing curricula at medical schools; however, having in mind positive outcomes and students' attitudes, we consider that their implementation should be one of the priorities for managers at the mentioned health care institutions.