Validation of an instrument to assess Barriers and Facilitators of Collaborative Interprofessional Practice

Abstract

The objective of this study was to develop and validate an instrument entitled Barriers and Facilitators of Collaborative Interprofessional Practice in Primary Health Care (BFCIP-PHC), which was developed in three stages. The first stage involved the development of the initial version of the instrument, which contained 12 items and was evaluated by 20 experts, who indicated that the questions were adequate in terms of content (lower bound 85%, higher bound 95%). The reproducibility of this approach was subsequently verified by reference to 27 health professionals. All the items exhibited a relative agreement greater than 74%. Finally, the content validity and internal consistency were assessed by reference to 799 Primary Health Care professionals. The results revealed a tri-factorial structure (Factor 1 – Team composition and opportunities for knowledge sharing; Factor 2 – Working conditions; and Factor 3 – Knowledge, attitudes and skills). The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranged between 0.76 and 0.87. The final model exhibited excellent goodness of fit and good values with respect to convergent and discriminant validity. The BFCIP-PHC was thus associated with good indicators of validity and may be recommended as a tool that can be used to evaluate the barriers and facilitators of collaborative interprofessional practice.