# Development of a mentorship framework guide to promote the acquisition of interprofessional education and collaborative practice competencies during undergraduate training: a mini-Delphi cross-sectional study

## TL;DR

This study created a mentorship guide to help faculty teach students how to work together across professions during their undergraduate training.

## Contribution

A new mentorship framework guide was developed to address the lack of guidelines for teaching interprofessional competencies.

## Key findings

- Students and mentors reported limited knowledge of interprofessional education (IPE) core competencies.
- Mentors lacked specific guidelines for mentoring IPE competencies and often did not provide targeted feedback.
- A validated mentorship framework guide was proposed to improve interprofessional collaboration training.

## Abstract

The current global burden of disease which includes emerging and re-emerging diseases calls for interprofessional partnerships and team work to work collaboratively to solve community health problems. Inter-professional collaboration needs to start with training whereby learners are mentored in inter-professional teams and collaborative care. Many guidelines do exist in teaching and learning but faculty often do not have guidelines on how to mentor learners to acquire the needed inter-professional competencies. This study aimed at developing a mentorship guide for faculty to enable them to ably mentor learners in the acquisition of interprofessional competencies.

It was a cross-sectional study involving both students and faculty mentors. Questionnaires were distributed to undergraduate students and the mentors at Makerere University College of Health Sciences and Busitema University Faculty of Health Sciences. Data from the participants was used alongside literature to develop the interprofessional education mentorship guide for faculty mentors. The guide was validated by a panel of experts.

From this study, students reported limited knowledge of the IPE core competencies and the faculty mentors corroborated this finding. Mentors did not directly give any feedback specifically targeting the IPE core competencies, though some of them unknowingly talked about some of the IPE competencies. The key challenges identified from students and faculty included limited training IPE and IPE core competencies and lack of guidelines for faculty mentors which they can follow to mentors students adequately across all the expected IPE competencies.

There was limited mentorship in IPE competencies. Findings from this study alongside literature and expert validation, a framework guide for mentors in relation to IPE competencies has been proposed.