Understanding Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Health Professionals on Interdisciplinary Team Approach in the provision of service in Pediatric Unit at Selected Rehabilitation Centre

Abstract

Background: Lack of collaboration, knowledge and practices among interdisciplinary team member‟s reduced patient safety and outcome have been reported in different literature. Centre for the rehabilitation of the paralysed promoted collaboration among interdisciplinary team members. In Pediatric unit interdisciplinary team members work together but yet not known about how effectively they collaborate with each other and with the patient. Purpose: To explore the current situation of inter-professional collaborative practice among the team members in a Pediatric department from the knowledge and perspectives of professionals. Methods & Materials: Mixed methodology, both qualitative and quantitative studies were applied to achieve the overall and specific objectives of the current study. In the quantitative part purposive sampling design was used to find out the level of collaboration among the team members. Each and every team members of inter-professional collaborative team were invited to participate in this part of the study. In qualitative part, phenomenological study design was used to understand the perceived strengths, weakness, opportunity and threats from the professional‟s perspective. For qualitative interview, simple random sampling was done to select participants from every discipline of team to assess their level of knowledge, attitudes toward the collaborative practice of inter-professional team. Results: The overall collaboration level of inter-professional collaborative team was slightly higher(72.23%) than moderate level of collaboration(51-75%).Among the eight domains of collaborative practice, most of the participants specified five domains where they showed high level of collaboration includes mission, meaningful purpose, goals‟; „community linkages and coordination of care‟; „communication & information exchange‟; „general role, responsibilities autonomy‟; „patient involvement‟; domain. Whereas in the rest of the three domains moderate level of collaboration was reported by the significant percentage of participants. Interprofessional collaborative team faced multiple barriers through this team had also strengths and opportunities to minimize the threats such as reoccurring conflicts and poor communication within rehabilitation settings. Conclusion: The study findings could be implicated in improving the collaboration level at rehabilitation sector where there is inter-professional team members working with children with disability and their family. Keywords: Knowledge, Attitude, Practice, Interdisciplinary team, Collaborative practice, Pediatric Unit, Rehabilitation.