Effectiveness of an Interprofessional Education Module on Care of Autistic Children in Enhancing the Interprofessional Competencies among Students of Healthcare Professions: A Study Protocol

Abstract

Background: Autism Spectrum Disorders are neurodevelopmental disorders that are being identified inchildren in current days due to the emerging technological and healthcare advances. Most often, childrenrequire specialized care from various healthcare practitioners by referral systems which requires parents/caregivers to take children from one place to another. Interprofessional Practice is a collaborative approachin professional care where healthcare providers work with people from within their own profession, withpeople outside their profession and with patients and their families. The process becomes laborious whenpractitioners do not appreciate the concept of Interprofessional Education. Being the future workforce,students from health professions should learn together to have better understanding of each other’s rolesand responsibilities and learn to have effective team communication. A collaborative approach is crucial inautism, to enable quality care for well-being and assist to provide early and comprehensive evaluation andappropriate interventions.The objective of the study is to develop an Interprofessional Education Module on care of autistic childrenfor Students of Healthcare professions and evaluate its effectiveness in enhancing the InterprofessionalCompetencies among them.Method: Quantitative pre-test-post-test approach. Phase 1 - development of the Module and AssessmentTool; Phase 2 - testing the Tool among 40 students from selected disciplines. Module and Tool will beprepared based on review of literature, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussion and needsassessment. Reflective summaries will document the Interprofessional Education experience of the students.Discussion: There are no comparable method of Interprofessional Education for care of children withautism, therefore, appraisal by experts will be considered as a critical step in validating the module and tool.Descriptive and Inferential Statistics will be used for analysis.