This tool is designed to help assess the extent to which the group being observed is behaving as an interprofessional team.
Thanks to Dr. Thistlethwaite for her September comment regarding the fact that the instrument can be used in a variety of settings. The JTOG was designed to be used as a guide to help students understand team behavior, i.e., whether a particular interprofessional group was functioning as a team. The items were taken from the literature on team building and was not designed to identify whether the team was interprofessional or uni-professional. As she indicates it could be used to assess a team task that was not clinical or did not involve patient care. We believe that because it is focused on team behavior, it is flexible enough to be of value to assess a number of situations. Our use of the instrument, and we would hope others, would be using it in that way; to assess whether an interprofessional group was functioning as a team.
The JTOG has face validity in the sense that the characteristics were taken from the literature on team building and vetted by a group of experts on interprofessional education and student feedback. This review occurred multiple times over the past two year. Because of the changes made to the instrument over the past year, we don’t have a large sample from which to assess the reliability statistically. This tool is being used by multiple institutions, and with a larger sample we may be able to test for reliability. Please keep in mind that when we first devised the instrument we were less concerned about the psychometric properties than we were about having a simple, easy to use observation tool to observe the characteristics of effective teams. We have found that it works really well for that purpose.
Has there been any validation process for this scale?
The items on this scale could be used for a team task that is not clinical, does not involve patient care, and that is uni-professional. The only item that mentions disciplines is item 3 and this could relate to medical disciplines rather than different professional groups. Team members are discussing a case or situation so this is not necessarily clinical. I think the items work for a specific team discussion but would not discriminate between interprofessional and uniprofessional practice in my opinion. There is patient related free text question below the table.
I think this assessment is a great start, but I am wondering why public health was not included as part of an interdisciplinary team? As we move towards more integrated care, public health personnel are critical.
In response to your comment. Yes we agree that public health can be an integral part of an interprofessional team. Public health as not included in the demographic section only because we are not using it with public health students. We have updated the instrument to have respondents indicate the professions that they are observing.
The Jefferson InterProfessional Observation Guide has been used after students observe clinical team experiences to dissect and highlight good team characteristics. Items on this tool have been mapped back to the Competencies and to the core IPE goals. It has been piloted in several different clinical learning situations and its face validity has been vetted by a committee of experts.
Do you have the details or stats regarding it's validity and or piloting processes? Thank you.
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