Background:

Interprofessional communication (IPC) is fundamental to high-quality care, where professionals from different disciplines collaborate longitudinally and across diverse cultural and healthcare system contexts. Despite its importance, IPC assessment in health professions education is often fragmented, summative, and insufficiently sensitive to contextual complexity. There is a need for a formative, consensus-based approach that supports learning progression and reflects the realities of everyday care practice.

Research questions:

To co-develop a formative assessment tool that supports culturally sensitive, context-adaptable, longitudinal learning of IPC competencies through progress testing principles. Specifically, we will (1) establish a consensus-based overview of core IPC competencies and their behavioural indicators (including progression levels), and (2) agree key instrument elements (format and feedback structure) to enable implementation across training settings, , and (3) evaluate learners’ outcomes, feasibility and usefulness.

Method:

A theory-informed, multi-round international eDelphi study will be conducted with experts from multiple health professions and countries. Building on the IPEC framework, principles of progress testing, and existing IPC assessment tools, Delphi rounds will focus on rating and refining IPC core competencies, their behavioural indicators, and on defining essential elements of a formative assessment instrument. Consensus will be quantified across rounds, and heterogeneity by profession and geographical region will be explored. Where needed, consensus meetings and structured focus groups will support usability refinement and finalisation of the instrument. The last phase will consist of a pilot study.

Results:

The study is expected to produce a consensus-based set of IPC core competencies and behavioural indicators aligned with different stages of training, as well as a formative assessment instrument for training of these competencies which considers cultural and system-level factors.

Conclusions:

This project will deliver an internationally validated overview of IPC core competencies and a theoretically grounded, practice-oriented instrument for formative IPC assessment, supporting the training of health professionals for collaborative primary care.

Points for discussion:

How can international primary care educators and researchers collaborate in pilot testing the instrument across diverse settings?

What would be the key areas requiring future adaptations (cultural, linguistic, system-level) of the instrument?

How can comparability of assessment be balanced with sensitivity to local context?