Assessment of interprofessional competence in undergraduate health professions education: protocol for a systematic review of self-report instruments

Background: Health practitioners from different professions, and with differing competencies, need to collaborate to provide quality care. Competencies in interprofessional working need developing in undergraduate educational preparation. This paper reports the protocol for a systematic review of self-report instruments to assess interprofessional learning in undergraduate health professionals' education. Methods: We will search PubMed, Web of Science, CINAHL and ERIC from January 2010 onwards. A combination of search terms for interprofessional learning, health professions, psychometric properties, assessment of learning and assessment tools will be used. Two reviewers will independently screen all titles, abstracts and full-texts. Potential conflicts will be resolved through discussion. Quantitative and mixed-methods studies evaluating interprofessional learning in undergraduate health professions education (e.g. medicine, nursing, occupational and physical therapy, pharmacy and psychology) will be included. Methodological quality of each reported instrument, underpinning theoretical frameworks, and the effects of reported interventions will be assessed. The overall outcome will be the effectiveness of instruments used to assess interprofessional competence. Primary outcomes will be the psychometric properties (e.g. reliability, discriminant and internal validity) of instruments used. Secondary outcomes will include time from intervention to assessment, how items relate to specific performance/competencies (or general abstract constructs) and how scores are used (e.g. to grade students, to improve courses or research purposes). Quantitative summaries in tabular format and a narrative synthesis will allow recommendations to be made on the use of self-report instruments in practice. Discussion: Many studies use self-report questionnaires as tools for developing meaningful interprofessional education activities and assessing students' interprofessional competence. This systematic review will evaluate both the benefits and limitations of reported instruments and help educators and researchers (i) choose the most appropriate existing self-report instruments to assess interprofessional competence and (ii) inform the design and conduct of interprofessional competency assessment using self-report instruments.