How interprofessional is your interprofessional organization?

In a previous publication of JACCP, I wrote an editorial providing criteria that might prove useful by health care professionals for determining their perceptions of interprofessional involvement in their specialty interprofessional health care organizations. The criteria had three levels with a series of questions allowing for yes or no responses and a column for comments. The first level was fundamental with eight questions, the second level was desirable with nine questions, and the third level was optimal with 10 questions. The editorial was based on the observation that there were widely varying degrees of pharmacist involvement in practice specialty organizations often claiming to be interprofessional. As a follow-up to that editorial and in preparation for a presentation on interprofessional collaborations at the 2022 ACCP Global Conference, PRN leadership (Chairs and Vice Chairs/Chairs Elect) were surveyed for their perceptions of the interprofessional nature of their practice specialty organization. Approval for the survey was obtained from an IRB. Since the purpose of this survey was simply to compile a preliminary overview of pharmacists' perceptions of their specialty organization, there was no attempt to provide rigorous survey validation. Initially, the survey was sent to a Chair and Chair Elect of a PRN to pilot test the instrument and give a general assessment of face validity. The instrument was also evaluated by a pharmacist with decades of practice experience and involvement in a professional organization congruent with the pharmacist's area of specialization. No problematic issues arose during this initial instrument assessment, so the survey was emailed to the broader PRN leadership. Of ACCP's 28 PRNs, the survey was not emailed to the PRN leadership of nine PRNs either because the PRN did not involve a specialty practice area per se, was too broad to consider as a specialty area, or because of the author's inability to find an interprofessional organization for the specialty through an internet search. Excluded were the following PRNs: clinical administration, community, drug information, education and training, global health, health equity, industry, and women's health. There was no response from one PRN yielding a 95% survey response rate. Each survey allowed for the assessment of two specialty practice organizations, so there could have been up to four organizations assessed if both the chair and vice chair/chair elect provided an assessment of two organizations, but this did not happen. Typically, there was one assessment by the leadership of any given PRN, but in several cases, the Chairs and Vice Chairs/Chair Elects made the decisions in tandem. Three respondents stated that their specialty did not have what they considered as a truly interprofessional organization (internal medicine, central nervous system, and perioperative care). Table 1 lists the organizations evaluated by the PRNs along with their assessment of activities using the fundamental, desirable, and optimal categorization. There were eight organizations that had “yes” responses for all three of these levels by at least one respondent suggesting a high degree of interprofessionalism: Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM), Neurocritical Care Society (NCS), American Diabetes Association (ADA), American Geriatric Society (AGS), HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA), American Society of Transplantation (AST), Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), and the American Society of Nephrology (ASN). In three of the returned surveys, it was clear that there was not a general understanding of the term “interprofessional,” since the respondents listed a specific ACCP PRN or another pharmacy organization devoted to their specialty. In addition, in one other instance, a respondent listed a pharmacy subsection of a larger professional organization and appeared to base their evaluations on participation in this pharmacy subsection. One respondent stated they did not understand how to interpret the question about whether an organization was “patient-centered,” so this question was unanswered for two organizations. There were four organizations, each of which was evaluated by two PRNs: Association of Diabetes Care and Education Specialists (ADCES), ADA, SCCM, and IDSA. SCCM was cited as a major interprofessional organization by Emergency Medicine PRN leadership but had one “no” response in contrast to all “yes” responses from the Critical Care PRN, but it is unclear how much to read into this single difference. Similarly, IDSA had all “yes” responses by the HIV PRN, but not by the Infectious Diseases PRN. There were a number of comments from respondents, many of which were explanations as to why they put “no” response in answer to selected questions (Supplemental information). This information is helpful for providing more insight into the responses, but since comments were optional, there was often none listed. There are a number of other limitations to this overall assessment of interprofessionalism by the leadership of the PRNs, beginning with the point noted earlier that there was some misinterpretation of what was meant by “interprofessional.” Additionally, the perspectives and associated responses were those of at most two pharmacists (ie, the chair and vice chair or chair elect) of any given PRN. It is certainly possible that other members of any given PRN would have had a different assessment, as might other members or representatives from the health care organizations. Finally, the author made some unilateral decisions with respect to ACCP PRNs not surveyed due to the perception that they were not associated with a specialty practice, but this assumption may be in error. However, the hope is that the information from this survey still has usefulness as pilot data to begin to evaluate Received: 6 July 2022 Revised: 11 July 2022 Accepted: 11 July 2022