Development of an interprofessional collaboration competency scale for children with medical complexity.

OBJECTIVE

To develop and validate an interprofessional collaboration competency scale for children with medical complexity (ICC-CMC). These children have the most complex healthcare needs, complicated chronic conditions, severe functional limitations and often need a considerable amount of healthcare resources.

DESIGN

Cross-sectional study.

SETTING

The self-administered ICC-CMC questionnaire was developed based on a literature review and 12 expert interviews.

PARTICIPANTS

Participants were 2347 interprofessionals from the health, medical, welfare and education fields in seven prefectures in Japan.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

We used Cronbach's alpha values to assess the internal consistency of the scale. Construct validity was confirmed with confirmatory factor analysis, and an existing scale was administered to assess criterion-related validity.

RESULTS

In total, 378 professionals provided valid responses. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses identified 12 items on three factors: 'sharing needs assessment skills', 'resource development skills' and 'creative networking skills'. The final model showed good fit on four indices (eg, goodness of fit index: 0.925). The Cronbach's alpha for the entire scale was 0.93 and was above 0.80 for each factor. The correlation coefficient between the existing scale and the ICC-CMC was 0.72 (p<0.001).

CONCLUSIONS

The ICC-CMC demonstrated acceptable internal consistency and validity. The scale has potential use in advancing professionals' individual practice and team performance in interprofessional collaboration. In addition, the ICC-CMC has the potential of improving satisfaction and outcomes for children with medical complexity and their families.