We know where we’re going (better care, lower costs and better health) and we know we’re going to get there by aligning interprofessional education with health system redesign in a new Nexus. But how will we know when we arrive?

While the National Center is working to answer this question through a focused research agenda, we think it’s just as important to serve as a resource about what’s happening now—on the ground, in the field—in interprofessional education and collaborative practice (IPECP). We know that clinicians and educators alike are looking for practical tools to help implement and measure the effects of IPE on learning, quality of care and health outcomes. We know you can’t wait for the results of long-term data gathering and analysis when the heat is on to transform health care today.

So, I asked my team to conduct a review of the available assessment tools, from learner attitude assessments to patient satisfaction surveys, specifically related to IPECP. Building on the fine work of the Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaborative, the result is a curated collection of 26 assessment tools, complete with validation information and, in most cases, access to view, download or request a copy of the instrument. 

The measurement instruments catalog was developed by the center’s consulting interprofessional team of evaluation experts, led by Senior Evaluation Advisor Jean King, PhD. We’ve been working with Jean to develop new thinking about integrating evaluation, research and informatics approaches in complex adaptive thinking.  At the National Center, our collective work to transform both health care and health professions education unequivocally qualifies as complex!

Jean is a distinguished teaching professor in the department of organizational leadership, policy and development at the University of Minnesota where she also coordinates the all-university program evaluation minor and serves as director of the Minnesota Evaluation Studies Institute (MESI). A sought-after presenter and writer on evaluation topics, she is the author of numerous books, articles, chapters, and reviews. Jean has served as a long-time evaluation trainer for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and has received both the Myrdahl Award for Evaluation Practice and the Ingle Award for Extraordinary Service from the American Evaluation Association. We are grateful to lean on Jean’s expertise and experience.

Michelle Gensinger, MS, was responsible for comparing the instruments to the team’s criteria and for communicating with each author about permission to post the instruments on the National Center website. We’re lucky to have Michelle on our team; before pursuing her PhD in evaluation studies, she spent 18 years at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine working in curriculum development and assessment, and clinical competency examination development.

I encourage you to read Jean King’s blog post about the team’s review process and inclusion criteria. This is a living resource, and one that we hope will become increasingly useful as we add your many voices to the conversation. Join our ongoing discussion forum on this topic—“Assessing Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice”—to share your own experiences using these instruments. Submit a tool that you’ve found useful through our Resource Exchange; if it fits our inclusion criteria, we’ll also add it to the curated catalog of measurement instruments. And follow us via email, Twitter and LinkedIn to catch an upcoming series of in-depth reviews and information about popular instruments.