The effects of interprofessional education on teamwork, communication skills and quality of health care in advanced and developing countries: A systematic review and meta-analysis study

Background: Inter-professional education is a new approach in education in which professionals in various fields of health systems learn from each other based on educational events in a real environment, actively and interactively. This systematic review and metaanalysis aims to investigate inter-professional education in advanced and developing countries. Methods: Persian and English keywords were used to search these databases: ISI Web of Science, Scopus, ProQuest, PubMed/Medline, Embase, Google Scholar, ERIC, Magiran, Irandoc, and Barakat with an English language restriction and for the years 2000 to 2019, using these terms: Embase, Meshand and free. Two evaluators assessed the extracted articles using the Critical Appraisal Skills Program (CASP) checklist. CMA 3.1 software was used for the analysis with a fixed-effects model. Results: A total of 1425 articles formed the basis of this study. In all, nine articles were extracted that examined the effect of inter-professional education from the viewpoints of professors and students (three for professors and six for students). Heterogeneity among the nine studies was not significant. Teamwork scores, communication skills, and healing of the participants in the study increased by 0.339, 0.283, and 0.275 points after the intervention, respectively. Conclusion: Inter-professional education is one method of educational integration. Students become aware of how their role overlaps with other medical professions as well as the limitations of their role in treating patients. However, inter-professional education implementation requires infrastructure, such as training professors and preparing them and students to accept inter-professional education.