Exploring the Attitudes Toward Interprofessional Practice: Eastern North Carolina Perspectives

Abstract

Interprofessional health care delivery has the potential to greatly impact the experience, costs, and outcomes of health care. Primary care providers have the capacity to be the tipping point of this change. Primary care providers’ attitudes toward interprofessional care may bolster or impede implementation of the concept. The purpose of this study was to ascertain the attitudes toward interprofessional practice as self-reported by primary care providers in eastern North Carolina (NC). The Attitudes Toward Health Care Teams Scale (ATHCTS), a validated 21-item scale, was used to explore providers’ attitudes toward intentional team-based collaborative practice within a large health system in eastern NC. Providers included physicians, physicians’ assistants and nurse practitioners. Cronbach’s alpha for the 21-item scale was calculated at .877. A Kruskal-Wallis test was used to examine a between groups analysis of the mean scores, finding no significant difference between the mean scores of the three professional groups. The findings of the nonparametric, cross-observational, quantitative study are discussed in this report. Further exploration of the attitudes of larger numbers of primary care providers is indicated.