Validation of the IPC65 questionnaire: a tool to measure interdisciplinarity in clinical practice

Aim: Interdisciplinary clinical practice has become an essential objective for the management of complex cases in a large number of health facilities in Quebec and elsewhere. However, this highly desirable practice cannot be implemented on demand and requires a carefully designed approach in combination with continuous feedback between the various partners involved in the management and functioning of an interdisciplinary team. The purpose of this research was to provide teams with a tool to help them identify their strengths and weaknesses in order to ensure continuous improvement. Methods: Following a comprehensive review of the literature on microsystems ensuring interdisciplinarity in health, we identified a large number of elements considered to be important factors allowing effective interdisciplinarity. These factors were used to construct a questionnaire that was submitted to several stages of validation (qualitative and statistical) designed to enable health professionals to measure their degree of integration of the concepts allowing interdisciplinary clinical practice. Results: This approach allowed validation of this questionnaire (Cronbach's alpha greater than 0.97). During the validation process, the number of questions of the questionnaire was reduced from 99 to 65. Conclusion: The various steps of validation of the questionnaire allowed the development of a relevant tool to promote continuous improvement of interdisciplinary clinical teams.