Promoting safe prescribing practice and interprofessional working: a workshop follow-up evaluation

Abstract

Safe prescribing requires successful interprofessional working. One way to facilitate this is to develop interprofessional education across disciplines. This paper presents findings from a follow-up evaluation of an interprofessional workshop for prescribing safety to assess the perceptions and attitudes toward working interprofessionally in non-medical prescribers and MPharm students. The objectives were to further validate an internal workshop questionnaire and the use of the of a scale to assess the readiness for interprofessional learning. An interprofessional workshop, centered around the issue of prescriptions and determinants of competence and safety, was attended by 126 non-medical prescribers and MPharm students. The workshop was evaluated using the Readiness for Interprofessional Learning questionnaire and an internally-produced evaluation, The workshop was evaluated using the Readiness for Interprofessional Learning questionnaire and an internally-produced evaluation. As part of this process, internal consistency of the internally-produced evaluation was verified.. The workshop was rated highly by all participants with overall positivity toward working interprofessionally. There was no evidence that non-medical prescribers and students rated the workshop significantly differently, but MPharm students scored slightly higher than non-medical prescribers on one domain of the internally-produced instrument. All domains of this instrument demonstrated good internal consistency. The workshop overall was received well and appears to meet the standards set out by The Centre for the Advancement of Interprofessional Education. While reliability measures of the internally produced instrument are promising, further work is needed to develop internal validity; and to determine whether any adaptations to the Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale are needed for subsequent use with different groups of participants.