(17) Assessing institutional education readiness to offer interprofessional education: a scoping review

Objective : This review aimed to identify the available assessment tools for assessing institutional readiness to offer interprofessional education.

Methods: A scoping review design was conducted by searching nine databases that cover health and educational studies. All phases were carried out by two researchers independently and any disagreements found were discussed with a third researcher. Data extracted included: publication data, assessment tool description, and intended application. The tools were further evaluated to determine what level of processes and determinants were addressed: micro (teaching), meso (institutional), and macro (systemic).

Results: The search strategies retrieved 810 studies. After removing the duplicates, a total of 522 studies were evaluated by title and abstract, and 23 studies were included for full-text reading. Finally, 10 studies with eight different assessment tools were involved in the final analysis. These studies (n=10) were published between 2010 and 2023, mostly conducted in the United States. Of the eight included assessment tools, four were validated by the author or previous studies. Seven tools emphasized selected health professionals, countries and themes. One tool was developed more broadly by national and international experts and did not focus on specific health professionals or countries. All of the reviewed assessment tools incorporated micro and meso processes and determinants, however, macro level was not addressed.

Conclusions: This review provides a comprehensive overview of the published assessment tools that can be useful for evaluating readiness to provide interprofessional education in a variety of settings. Macro level was not captured in any of the analyzed studies. A tool that addresses this gap and includes the macro level would be a valuable addition for assessment of IPE readiness globally.