Attitudes of Health Professions Students in the Philippines Towards lnterprofessional Collaboration

TITLE: Attitudes of Health Professions Students in the Philippines Towards Interprofessional Collaboration Purpose: Determining attitudes of health professions students towards interprofessional collaboration (IPC) can help guide curriculum development in interprofessional education (IPE). Methods: The Interprofessional Attitudes Scale (IPAS) was administered to students in their final clinical year of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, medical technology, rehabilitative sciences, and dentistry programs at a private university in the Philippines. Overall and subscale IPAS scores were compared across programs using ANOVA. Results: Positive attitudes were demonstrated by mean scores > 4/5 (agree or strongly agree) for the total IPAS scale and all subscales except for interprofessional bias 3 to 4 (neutral to agree). Post-hoc tests identified that pharmacy and dentistry differed on the patient-centeredness subscale, mean (SD) of 4.57 (0.39) and 4.9 (0.21) respectively, p=.002; no other significant differences were found across professions. Prior work experience in the healthcare field and having a parent or guardian working/had worked in healthcare did not significantly impact scores. Conclusions: A pre-graduation IPAS can serve as a needs assessment and as one measure of the effectiveness of existing IPE efforts and culture. Positive attitudes suggest educators can focus additional IPE efforts on other goals such as attaining specific competencies and skills.