Abstract
BackgroundCollaborative interprofessional practices are essential in caring for people with complex mental health problems. Despite the difficulties of demonstrating positive impacts of interprofessional education (IPE), it is believed to enhance interprofessional practices. We aimed to assess impacts on patient satisfaction, self-reported psychological distress and mental health status in a psychiatric ward.MethodsWe conducted a nonrandomized intervention study with patient satisfaction, psychological distress, and health status as outcomes. Mental health inpatients were referred to either an interprofessional training unit (intervention group) or to a conventionally organized ward (comparison group). Outcomes were assessed using the Short Form Health Survey (SF-36), the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10), and the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ-8).ResultsThe intervention group included 129 patients, the comparison group 123. The former group reported better mental health status than the latter; the postintervention mean difference between them being 5.30 (95% CI 2.71–7.89; p = 0.001; SF-36), with an effect size of 0.24. The intervention group patients also scored higher on satisfaction (mean difference 1.01; 95% CI 0.06–1.96; p = 0.04), with an effect size of 0.31. The groups’ mean scores of psychological distress were identical.ConclusionOur results support the hypothesized value of interprofessional training: intervention group patients reported higher scores regarding mental health status and satisfaction than did comparison group patients. As IPE interventions have rarely involved patients and fewer have taken place in practice settings, further research into both the processes and the long-term effects of IPE in mental healthcare is needed.Trial registrationThe study was registered in ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT03070977 on March 6, 2017.
Highlights
Collaborative interprofessional practices are essential in caring for people with complex mental health problems
During the study period, 281 patients were referred to the intervention group, while 271 patients were referred to the comparison group
Health status and psychological distress We investigated the unadjusted change over time of MCS and Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) scores
Summary
Collaborative interprofessional practices are essential in caring for people with complex mental health problems. Despite the difficulties of demonstrating positive impacts of interprofessional education (IPE), it is believed to enhance interprofessional practices. Collaboration among team members is often fraught with problems, affecting the quality of care in terms of poor service delivery, low patient satisfaction, and errors [1, 2, 5, 6]. Interprofessional education (IPE) is assumed to enhance such collaborative practices, the field has met challenges in demonstrating effects on mental health outcomes [2, 7]. An increasingly important and commonly used indicator for measuring the quality of care [10, 11], is reported [8, 12]
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