Attitudinal changes of undergraduate students learning online interprofessional education for patient safety: Comparative evaluation of an online program using the DID method.

Objective: Interprofessional education (IPE) can cultivate competencies in multidisciplinary collaboration for patient safety, and both face-to-face and online IPE programs have recently been introduced. This study aimed to elucidate the effects of the online IPE program on undergraduate students after the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.

Methods: The difference-in-differences method was used to assess undergraduate students in the Schools of Medicine and Health Sciences and in the Faculty of Pharmacy at Takasaki University of Health and Welfare who participated in IPE programs at Gunma University (face-to-face IPE was implemented in 2019 and online IPE in 2020). We distributed a questionnaire that included modified versions of the Attitudes Toward Health Care Teams Scale (ATHCTS) and the Teamwork Attitudes Questionnaire (T-TAQ) to evaluate attitudes toward health-care teams and collaboration for patient safety, respectively, and then compared the differences.

Results: The mean score on the "team efficiency" subscale of the ATHCTS in the online IPE program was significantly lower than that in the face-to-face IPE program. Scores on the T-TAQ in two categories, "mutual support" and "communication", were significantly higher in the online IPE program, which suggests that it may have a similar effect on students learning collaborative practice for patient safety. However, due to technological difficulties, the online IPE program reduced the educational effects for "team efficiency". The improvements in "mutual support" and "communication" seen in the online IPE program, suggest its necessity for collaborative practice for patient safety.

Conclusion: These findings suggest that an online IPE program for patient safety may provide better education effects as a whole, but efforts are needed to minimize the associated technological difficulties.