Interprofessional collaboration between midwives and physicians
Summer ; Includes bibliographical references. ; Healthcare delivery in the United States is rapidly changing and collaborative practice models have been cited as an approach to improving efficiency and effectiveness, reducing cost and maintaining safety and quality. Measurement of collaboration as a process would aid our understanding of the role of interprofessional collaboration between midwives and physicians in improving outcomes of care. A descriptive study was conducted to determine whether the collaborative process could be measured with information collected at the individual level and aggregated to represent the practice as a whole. The study evaluated the psychometric properties of the Collaborative Practice Scale (CPS) at the individual and practice level in midwife-physician collaborative practices that provide inpatient maternity services in the Military Health System. The sample included 106 midwives and physicians who provide care in obstetric practices located in 10 Military Treatment Facilities (MTFs) across the United States. Psychometric properties of the CPS included Cronbach's alpha coefficient of .98. Test-retest reliability was measured in a two-week interval with an intraclass correlation coefficient of .99 (p < .01). Internal consistency was measured with item-to-total correlations ranging from .83-.94 and inter-item correlations from .71-.88. Principal components analysis resulted in a single factor loading, accounting for over 80% of total variance. Psychometric properties of the scale were also evaluated at the MTF/practice level. Strong within practice agreement (rwg(j) = .94) and between practices variance, (ICC1 = .15, ICC2 = .65) provided support for use of the construct to represent the practice in multilevel research. Among practices with higher CPS scores, patterns of reporting on scale items were similar, while patterns for items in low-scoring groups were markedly inconsistent. Interprofessional collaboration as a construct can be measured and used in multilevel research. The results of this study provide sufficient evidence to prompt further study of the relationship of the collaborative process to outcomes of care. Evaluating this relationship is necessary to provide evidence that collaborative care models are effective in improving the safety, quality, and efficiency of healthcare.