Undergraduate psychology and dental students’ perceptions of interprofessional learning when using motivational interviewing to encourage health behaviour change: a mixed methods study

ABSTRACT

Objective

To examine undergraduate psychology and dental students’ perceptions of their self-perceived ability, value and comfort in working with others in an interprofessional context.

Method

Students participated in a new interprofessional learning initiative incorporating motivational interviewing to encourage health behaviour change. Pre- and post-interprofessional learning survey data from 49 students and written reflections of 115 students were analysed.

Results

Students demonstrated significant improvement in all quantitative measures, including overall interprofessional socialisation and values as well as perceived ability, value and comfort in working with others. Three themes relating to perceptions of ability, value and comfort with interprofessional collaboration were identified: Scope of Practice, Collaboration as a Valuable Approach and Healthy Scepticism.

Conclusion

While the findings show that even small-scale interprofessional learning programmes can significantly increase students’ perceptions in these domains, student feedback can further enhance interprofessional learning. Within interprofessional learning, the scope of practice for health professions, including the students’ own discipline, must be clear, knowledge about facilitators and barriers to successful interprofessional collaboration and ways to address these issues must be included, and efforts should be made to show students how professions that may initially seem quite disparate, can and do, collaborate to support positive patient outcomes.

Key Points

What is already known about this topic:

• (1) Successful interprofessional collaboration offers benefits for clients, health professionals and health systems.

• (2) Interprofessional learning aims to produce a collaborative practice-ready psychology workforce responsive to a range of client presentations and workplace contexts.

• (3) Psychologists are often employed in multidisciplinary teams, yet in Australia it has not been commonplace for psychologists-in-training to be exposed to interprofessional learning.

What this topic adds:

• (1) Small-scale interprofessional learning initiatives may be associated with improvements in students’ overall interprofessional socialisation and values, and perceived ability, value and comfort in working with individuals from other health professions.

• (2) For interprofessional learning to be successful, students must be knowledgeable about the scope of practice for a range of health professions, including their own.

• (3) Students benefit from knowledge about facilitators and barriers to successful interprofessional collaboration and guidance on how to address these to maximise the effectiveness of collaboration.

KEYWORDS:

• Interprofessional collaboration
• interprofessional learning
• motivational interviewing
• psychology students
• dental students
• student perceptions

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank those who volunteered to act as simulated patients.

Disclosure statement

The author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) declare(s) that no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article was received.