![Sample our Health and Social Care journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5938/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Health-Social-Care.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
In the context of a quality assurance policy, a regional network initiated a project to measure the quality of interprofessional consultation meetings. A questionnaire was evaluated on content validity by 48 stakeholders: healthcare professionals, representatives from healthcare organizations, interprofessional consultation meeting coordinators, and representatives from patient organizations. A revision resulted in two subscales (each consisting of 16 items) for assessing process and outcome aspects of interprofessional consultation meetings. After validating the instrument, it was used in a hands-on test by individuals and in a pilot series of team-based self-assessments. Responses were used to analyse reliability and consistency of the subscales and the items, and to reveal first indications of relative weaknesses and strengths in interprofessional consultation meetings. Results point out that the subscales, now part of the Interprofessional Practice and Education Quality Scales (IPEQS), can be useful for self-assessment of the quality of such meetings in primary and community healthcare, but maybe also in other areas of interprofessional collaboration.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks the core members of the SELGent project steering group (P. Verdonck, F. Van Houtte, and G. Buyse) for co-supervising the research project, and the coordinators of interprofessional consultation meetings (Caroline Verhaegen from Christelijke Mutualiteit Midden-Vlaanderen, Isabelle Arys and Caroline Loneux from Solidariteit voor het Gezin, and Els De Witte from Bond Moyson) who implemented the pilots of team-based self-assessments.
Declaration of interest
The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of this article.