Relationship between readiness for interprofessional learning and academic self-efficacy among nursing students: a cross-sectional study

Abstract Background Modern medicine emphasizes that medical professionals engage in interprofessional collaboration to better meet the diverse needs of patients from physical, psychological, and social perspectives. As nursing students are the future reserve of the clinical nursing workforce, nursing educators worldwide should pay close attention to nursing students’ interprofessional learning attitudes and take responsibility for training qualified interprofessional nursing personnel. However, little is known about the relationship between nursing students' readiness for interprofessional learning and academic self-efficacy. Thus, this study aims to investigate the level of readiness for interprofessional learning and academic self-efficacy among nursing students, and to explore the relationship between the two. Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted with a sample of 741 undergraduate nursing students pursuing four-year degrees from a school in Jinan, Shandong Province, China from November to December 2021. The social-demographic questionnaire, Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale, and Academic Self-efficacy Scale were used for data collection. Descriptive statistics used to analyze the data included: Cronbach's alpha, t-test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson’s correlation, and multiple linear regression analysis. Results Readiness for interprofessional learning mean score was (3.91 ± 0.44) and mean academic self-efficacy was (3.47 ± 0.42). Significant differences were found in the research variables according to participants’ sex, grade, choice of nursing profession, and frequency of communication with health-related major students in studies ( p < 0.05, p < 0.001). Pearson correlation analysis showed that academic self-efficacy was positively related to readiness for interprofessional learning ( r = 0.316, p < 0.01). The hierarchical regression analysis showed that academic self-efficacy was positively related to readiness for interprofessional learning (β = 0.307, p < 0.001), The model explained 15.6% of the variance in readiness for interprofessional learning (F = 18.038, p < 0.001). Conclusions Readiness for interprofessional learning and academic self-efficacy were in the middle level among nursing students. Moreover, there was a significant positive correlation between the two. Therefore, it is very important for nursing educators to improve nursing students’ academic self-efficacy before improving their readiness for interprofessional learning.