Development and validation of a tool to assess the readiness of a clinical teaching site for interprofessional education (InSITE)

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ABSTRACT

Interprofessional education within clinical teaching sites is a key part of training for pre-professional students. However, the necessary characteristics of these interprofessional clinical teaching sites is unclear. We developed a tool, the Interprofessional Education Site Readiness, or InSITE, tool, for individuals at a site to use as a self-assessment of the site’s current readiness for providing interprofessional education. The tool progressed through six stages of development, collecting evidence for validity and reliability, resulting in a final tool with 23 questions distributed across five domains. Data from 94 respondents from a variety of national sites were used for the item analysis showing acceptable item-to-total correlations. Internal reliability testing gave a Cronbach’s coefficient alpha of more than 0.70 for each group level comparison. Known groups validity testing provides strong evidence for its responsiveness in detecting differences in sites where IPE is implemented. The results of the testing lead us to conclude that the InSITE tool has acceptable psychometric properties. Additionally, we discovered that the process in which the InSITE tool was used demonstrated that it can facilitate learning in practice for the health professionals and can help make implicit, informal workplace learning and the hidden curriculum explicit.

KEYWORDS:

• Interprofessional education
• collaborative practice
• assessment tool
• informal learning
• hidden curriculum

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the personnel at the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education for adding their knowledge and expertise to the development of this tool.

Authors Contributions

BS conceived of the study, participated in the design and implementation of the study, and helped draft the manuscript. DR analyzed InSITE data, worked on refinement of the instrument and assisted in preparation of the manuscript. AP conceived of the study, participated in the design and implementation of the study, and helped draft the manuscript. BB provided conceptual and implementation advice and helped draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Access to the InSITE Tool

The authors have made the InSITE tool available as an online Appendix.

Disclosure Statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.