Psychological needs and collective capabilities in interprofessional education: A sequential mediation of healthcare students' interprofessional learning readiness.

BACKGROUND: Interprofessional education (IPE) is essential for healthcare collaboration, yet the psychological mechanisms influencing students' readiness remain underexplored, leaving teachers with limited guidance on how to effectively foster student engagement and collaboration. OBJECTIVE: Guided by self-determination theory, this study explored the mechanism through which satisfaction of basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) promotes students' readiness for interprofessional learning (teamwork and collaboration, professional identity) via collective capabilities (team cohesiveness and collective efficacy). METHOD: A total of 222 undergraduate students from different health and social care, as well as legal-related disciplines participated in this study. These students represented diverse disciplines including Medicine, Nursing, Social Work, Chinese Medicine, Pharmacy, Speech and Hearing Sciences, and Law. To examine the fit of the hypothesized model, sequential mediation analysis was employed. RESULTS: Results indicated that autonomy, competence, and relatedness had significant total effects on teamwork/collaboration and professional identity dimensions of IPE readiness, with distinct mediation patterns. Team cohesiveness and collective efficacy served as significant mediators, with varying patterns across needs. For autonomy, partial mediation was observed with indirect effects accounting for 49.7% of the total effect on teamwork/collaboration. For competence, full mediation was evident with indirect effects explaining 87.5% of the total effect on teamwork/collaboration, with the sequential pathway through both mediators contributing 45.0%. Relatedness showed partial mediation with strong direct effects on professional identity (80.6% of total effect). CONCLUSION: Distinct patterns of mediation reveal that autonomy and relatedness shape IPE readiness through both direct and team-level pathways, whereas competence operates primarily via team cohesiveness and collective efficacy. Targeting both individual psychological needs and collective capabilities may enhance the effectiveness of interprofessional education programs.