Autonomous motivation explains interprofessional education outcomes

Abstract

Objectives In response to the observations that interprofessional education (IPE) is seemingly atheoretical or under‐theorised, this quantitative research seeks to uncover students’ motivational mechanisms which could explain their behavioural and collaborative outcomes using self‐determination theory (SDT). While SDT has been studied in various contexts, its applicability to IPE remains underexplored. This study aims to integrate a new perspective in understanding students’ motivation in IPE by exploring how the fulfilment of a need for sense of autonomy, competence and relatedness is linked to desirable IPE outcomes. Methods Utilising quantitative methods, we involved 255 health care students in Hong Kong from the medical, nursing and pharmacy disciplines enrolled in IPE anticoagulation therapy module. They were invited to respond to the Psychological Need Satisfaction Questionnaire and other measures as part of the post‐test. Results Sense of autonomy emerged as the strongest positive predictor of behavioural (collective dedication, behavioural engagement) and collaboration outcomes (team effectiveness, goal achievement). There were no significant program‐level differences across these outcomes except for behavioural engagement for which nursing students had a higher perception than medicine students. Conclusions We were able to demonstrate that SDT is a meaningful framework in understanding behavioural and collaboration outcomes in IPE. The major theoretical contribution of this study refers to the ability of students’ motivation to explain variance in their behavioural outcomes. That is, sense of autonomy consistently predicted team effectiveness, collective dedication, behavioural engagement and goal achievement. Autonomous motivation among a sample of health care students can explain behavioural outcomes. Theoretical, methodological and practical implications are discussed.

Applying motivational framework in medical education: a self-determination theory perspectives

“…This refers to students’ perception of how IPE allowed them to achieve collaboration competencies [ 17 ].…”

“…Furthermore, we used the instrument adapted and validated in Study 1, the BPNS-IPE, to examine the theoretical link between psychological needs satisfaction (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) in predicting team cohesiveness in IPE. Further, this aims to provide generalizability to the earlier study of Ganotice et al [ 17 ] on how psychological need satisfaction can predict IPE outcomes using a different set of samples.…”

“…Similarly, in corporate settings, need satisfaction has been associated with team effectiveness [ 51 ]. Recently, the importance of need satisfaction in the IPE context has also started gaining recognition, as need satisfaction and autonomous motivation have been found to be linked with positive outcomes, such as interprofessional collaboration, team effectiveness, collective dedication, behavioral engagement, and goal achievement, among others [ 16 , 17 ].…”

Facilitating motivation for interprofessional education programmes

“…Although widely applied, neither SDT specifically nor consideration of motivation more generally has received a lot of attention in the context of interprofessional education (IPE) 3 . This issue of Medical Education provides a counter example as Ganotice et al attempt to change the narrative by delving into the relationship between motivation and interprofessional education for 3rd year medicine, nursing and pharmacy students 4 . Interprofessional education is defined as the process whereby two or more professions learn with, from and about each other 5 .…”

“…Such activity is often used in universities and health care facilities to address the complex training needs of the health professions 5 . Ganotice et al hypothesised that the fulfilment of the three needs identified in SDT in the context of interprofessional education would lead to greater satisfaction with interprofessional goals 4 . They found that autonomy in particular was related to team effectiveness, collective dedication, behavioural engagement and goal achievement in the interprofessional education context 4 …”