Advancing Interprofessional Education (IPE): Exploring the relationship between institutional characteristics and IPE implementation

Team-based healthcare has been shown to reduce medical errors, improve health outcomes, increase provider and patient satisfaction, and reduce healthcare costs. For practitioners to work collaboratively, they must first attain the competencies for patient- and population-centered, team-based care; this is provided through interprofessional education (IPE). However, successful implementation of IPE remains elusive to many institutions of higher education because it is a shift away from the paradigm of teaching students in disciplinary silos (e.g., educating nursing students with only other nursing students) and physician-centric care (as opposed to team-based, patient- and population-centric care). The purpose of this study was to gather empirical data that explores institutional characteristics and their relationship to IPE implementation. Questions included: 1) Is there a relationship between organizational characteristics and level of IPE implementation (i.e., no IPE to full integration of IPE)? 2) What are the identified barriers for various facets of IPE programming (e.g., courses, clinical rotations, etc.)? 3) Do the barriers to IPE implementation differ by organizational characteristics? To elucidate these issues, an online survey was sent to academic health institutions in Texas. Organizational information was augmented with institutional data from the National Center for Education Statistics Integrated Postsecondary Data System. Analyses included descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and a linear mixed model. Key results indicate that: 1) centralized models promote greater advancement of IPE, 2) the number and type of disciplines participating in IPE impact IPE programming, 3) exploring multiple facets of IPE is more informative than studying a singular construct of IPE, and 4) misalignment between IPE priorities and implementation highlights areas for improvement. These findings hold substantial implications for educators and administrators as they consider strategies to advance IPE in their institutions.

Embargo status: Restricted until 01/2027. To request the author grant access, click on the PDF link to the left.