The attitudes of final year medical and pharmacy students to interprofessional learning in Iraq

Abstract

Background: Interprofessional learning (IPL) is considered as the gold standard strategy to improve health-care teamwork. The IPL will help the students to improve their knowledge and professional attitudes. The advantages of IPL depend on the readiness of health-care students to learn with others. Aims and Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess the attitudes of pharmacy and medical students toward IPL in Iraq. Materials and Methods: The readiness for IPL scale questionnaire was applied to evaluate the readiness of the students towards IPL. It was distributed to medical and pharmacy students in Iraqi universities. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 20 (SPSS) software was used to save and analyze the data. Chi-square test was performed to assess differences between groups. Results: From 165, 149 students returned the questionnaire; the response rate was 90.3%. The majority of students revealed positive attitudes toward IPL. The IPL was reported to have a positive effect on patient care and professional working relationships. However, the two groups differed: Pharmacy students indicated more strongly that an outcome of IPL would be a more effective team working and better ability to understand clinical problems. Medical students were less sure that IPL will improve their positive thinking about others, and saw doctors as the predominant in health-care system. Conclusions: Our findings demonstrated that medical and pharmacy students have favorable attitudes to IPL and willing to share knowledge with other health-care students to enhance the patient care and health-care services quality by encouraging teamwork and collaboration skills.