Building Pre-Professional Students' Interprofessional Skills and Confidence: A Population Health Approach

Abstract

Many graduates of health science programs lack the skills and confidence to incorporate multiple providers' perspectives when designing coordinated care outcomes. This longitudinal cross-sectional study used the Interprofessional Attitude Scale (IPAS) to study prelicensure nursing students' perceptions of interprofessional (IP) work. Between 2015 and 2018, IPAS scores and anecdotal data were collected for four consecutive semesters. Data suggest students' (n = 162) attitudes changed significantly toward teamwork, community centeredness, and biases with medium to large effect sizes (r = .33 to .51). Anecdotal findings echoed these shifts in student attitudes. There is no one ideal approach to build IP practice into curricula that is content saturated. With the shared commitment of IP faculty and the use of creative educational approaches, weaving IP processes into population health curricula encourages students to engage in IP work and develop the skills and confidence needed for IP practice. [J Nurs Educ. 2020;59(3):169-172.].