Improvements in patient care directly result from the framework provided by Interprofessional Education (IPE). Competencies in communication, ethics, roles and duties, and teamwork were set in 2010 by the Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel. Several allied health degree programs, including respiratory therapy (RT), have been studied to determine their students’ familiarity with and attitudes toward IPE. Faculty in other healthcare fields, such as sports training, nutrition, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and dental hygiene, were used as comparisons to RT teachers. The IPE competencies were ranked in importance by the faculty. In order of importance, RT instructors put communication at the top, followed by teams and teamwork, roles and duties, and ethics. Rankings of IPE competencies by allied health faculty demonstrated statistically significant differences, as determined by a Kruskal-Wallis Dwass-Steel-Chritchlow-Fligner pairwise study. The RT faculty had a significantly greater response rate in the area of communication compared to the AT faculty (P<.001), the dental hygiene (DH) faculty (P<.001), the nutrition (NT) faculty (P<.001), and the occupational therapy (OT) faculty (P=.003). Researchers found that RT professors answered less than those in dental hygiene (DH), nutrition (NT), and physical therapy (PT) when asked about ethical issues (P<.001, P=.02, and P<.001). The percentage of RT teachers who answered questions about their roles and responsibilities was significantly greater than that of athletic training (AT) teachers (P=.007) and OT teachers (P<.001). The RT faculty had a statistically significantly greater response rate than the AT faculty (P=.02), the DH faculty (P<.001), the OT faculty (P=.002), and the PT faculty (P<.001). There was no statistically significant variation in the rankings of competencies between RT professors who teach at different degree levels (associate’s degree programs vs. bachelor’s and master’s degree programs), but there was a significant difference in how teamwork was ranked between these groups.
Source: rc.rcjournal.com/content/67/10/1246
