Globally, numerous health issues require the involvement of a variety of healthcare and social workers, including generalists and specialists (Tong et al. 2020). The ageing population and increasing burden of chronic diseases have resulted in unique challenges for healthcare professionals, particularly in primary care (Khan, Addo & Findlay 2024; Sun & Li 2023). Literature reveals that healthcare has suffered fragmentation, leading to poor-quality care and higher health costs (Gatome-Munyua et al. 2025; Prior et al. 2023). Consequently, new care models have arisen, including those based on interprofessional collaboration, to improve healthcare efficiency and patient outcomes by reducing costs (Carron et al., 2021; Djaharuddin et al. 2025). Interprofessional collaborative practice has proven beneficial in delivering safe and high-quality patient care (Bouton et al. 2023). Additionally, it should be noted that IPL has the potential to enhance the clinical and medical knowledge and skills of upcoming health workers. Research has demonstrated that IPL can help minimise clinical errors in patient care, leading to a higher level of satisfaction among both patients and health workers (Filies & Frantz 2021; Khanbodaghi et al. 2019; Sulaiman et al. 2021; Sunguya et al. 2014). One benefit of IPL is that it can break down the barriers between various professions and prompt shifts in attitudes, thereby reducing stereotypes among medical professionals (Kara et al. 2022). For students, IPL has been regarded as a favourable approach for developing an interest in patient care, transforming their outlook and improving their clinical and medical knowledge (Shakhman et al. 2020). Ensuring that patients receive optimal care and well-being requires coordinating treatments across professions from different viewpoints (Shakhman et al. 2020; Sunguya et al. 2014). One of the reasons for non-implementation may be how a clinician’s identity affects interprofessional collaborative practice. Nonetheless, several studies have shown that students in the health discipline have a positive attitude towards IPL (Alruwaili et al. 2020; Jimenez et al. 2018). According to Klein and Beeson (2022), opportunities for clinical mental health counsellors will likely increase as the larger healthcare system evolves towards more interprofessional healthcare settings. Although the counselling profession’s codes of ethics embed certain aspects of interprofessionalism, discussions on identity have primarily focused on interprofessional identity. To examine both intra- and interprofessional identity, a study was conducted with clinical mental health counsellors using the Professional Identity Scale in Counselling – Short Form and the University of West of England Interprofessional Questionnaire (Klein & Beeson 2022). The results revealed that clinical mental health counsellors assign importance to both types of identity, but they have more trust in their interprofessional identity (Klein & Beeson 2022). Graduate attribute studies in South Africa have found that teamwork among various disciplines is an essential competency for higher education institutions (Filies & Frantz 2021). Interprofessional learning instructors act as mentors, teachers and coaches for students from different professions, but they often feel underqualified because of their lack of necessary skills in dealing with diverse student populations with varying skill levels, responsibilities and social backgrounds. Researchers have started examining the culture, power dynamics, conflicts and systems present in practical contexts, which are believed to be responsible for IPL failures. These issues exacerbate the problem, as not only must IPL instructors teach interprofessional cooperation techniques in these environments, but they also must prepare students with tools to overcome obstacles that hinder their collaboration (Cimino et al. 2022; Wyatt, Kleinheksel & Tews 2021).

The efficacy of IPL is recognised by the WHO and included in the guidelines for transformative medical education (Aldriwesh, Alyousif & Alharbi 2022; Lee et al. 2019). To drive desired outcomes, countries are urged to promote IPL and incorporate it into their present curriculum. Namibia embarked on a curriculum transformation since 2021 in order to improve the graduate attributes such as ethical and moral leadership, global citizenry, problem-solving and critical thinking skills, adaptability and flexibility, effective communication skills, life-long learning and teamwork in all its undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. These attributes are a set of transferable characteristics designed to prepare them for the challenges of the 21st century workplace and society. Therefore, there is a need to investigate the readiness of students on IPL. This study assessed the readiness for IPL among undergraduate health discipline students at the University of Namibia.

A quantitative descriptive research design was employed to evaluate the readiness for IPL among undergraduate health discipline students at a leading Namibian university. The cross-sectional descriptive design was chosen for its proven ability to accurately assess IPL readiness, aligning with the methodology utilised in comparable studies (Alruwaili et al. 2020; An et al. 2024; Kara et al. 2022).

The setting for this study encompassed three of the five health campuses at the University of Namibia, offering qualifications in health-related courses in Namibia. The selected campuses – Rundu, Hage Geingob and the Main Campus – serve an estimated population of 2000 undergraduate students across the School of Medicine, School of Dentistry, School of Pharmacy and School of Nursing and Public Health. These campuses are located in populated towns in Namibia, where two intermediate hospitals and one national referral hospital offer valuable opportunities for students in health disciplines to participate in practical attachments. A foundational premise of contemporary health education is that by the final year, health students must possess the capacity to comprehend, collaborate with and learn from peers and other members of the healthcare team to optimise patient outcomes.

The total population was 520 final-year undergraduate students enrolled in courses such as medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and nursing and public health at a leading university in Namibia. A total of 236 participants were recruited using purposive and random sampling. Sampling was conducted in two stages, beginning with the purposeful selection of sites, followed by random sampling to recruit the actual participants. The sample was calculated using Solvins’ formula (Equation 1): n=N1+N*α2[Eqn 1] where n is the sample size, N is the total population and α is the sampling error at 5% (Tejada & Punzalan 2012). To be eligible, participants were required to be final-year undergraduate students with access to the Internet and a prior collaborative experience, either through academic projects or during clinical placements. The study excluded participants who were sick, those with no Internet connectivity during the data collection period and those who were unwilling to participate.

The study employed a validated online questionnaire tool, the readiness for interprofessional learning scale (RIPLS), developed from literature (Parsell & Bligh 1999; Roopnarine & Boeren 2020). The tool validated and consisted of 19 items in its three domains, namely teamwork and collaboration, professional identity and roles and responsibilities (McFadyen et al. 2005). This RIPLS tool embedded a domain, which collected demographic data, such as age, gender, religion, marital status and health discipline course. The instrument demonstrated strong internal reliability, achieving a Cronbach’s alpha (α) of 0.78, which surpasses the α > 0.70 standard (Taber 2018). Concurrently, the tool’s content validity was confirmed through review and approval by a panel of three specialist nurse educators.

Teamwork and collaboration is composed of nine items assessed through a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) (e.g. ‘Learning with other healthcare students will help me become a more effective member of a healthcare team’ and ‘Patients would ultimately benefit if healthcare students worked together to solve patient problems’).

Professional identity was measured with seven yes or no questions (e.g. ‘I don’t want to waste my time learning with other healthcare students’ and ‘It is not necessary for undergraduate healthcare students to learn together’).

Roles and responsibilities were assessed with three yes or no questions (e.g. ‘The function of nurses and therapists is mainly to provide support for doctors’ and ‘I have to acquire much more knowledge and skill than other healthcare students’). Importantly, negative statements (e.g. items 10, 11, 12 13 and 18) were scored in reverse such that a higher overall score indicates a higher readiness for IPL (McFadyen et al. 2005).

The total average score for this scale exhibits a range from a minimum of 19 to a maximum of 65. For the construct of readiness for teamwork and collaboration, a mean score within the range of 4.0 to 5.0 signifies a high degree of readiness. Conversely, a mean score of less than 4.0 indicates a low level of readiness. In contrast, the assessment of readiness towards professional identity and roles and responsibilities is evaluated using a different threshold. A mean score of ≥ 1.5 is indicative of greater readiness, while a mean scores of ≤ 1.4 suggest low readiness within this specific dimension.

Data were collected between May and August 2023 to allow enough time to collect data from various campuses. The researcher’s involvement in the data collection process was limited to the dissemination of the questionnaire via participants’ academic WhatsApp groups. Participants completed the questionnaire on a self-administered basis. Two follow-up reminders were issued to encourage participation. During this phase, no clarifications, explanations or direct interactions occurred between the researcher and participants, ensuring that responses were not influenced. All questionnaires were completed anonymously. Only participants meeting the predefined inclusion criteria received the questionnaire. Electronic data collected were securely stored on the researcher’s password-protected personal computer.

After downloading the responses on an Excel sheet from online Google Forms, the data were cleaned and coded before checking for completeness in order to exclude incorrect or missing data. Data were then analysed using SPSS version 28. To ensure consistent scoring, negative statements were reverse-scored prior to computing the mean value for the variable. Descriptive analysis was used by computing the mean scores and standard deviation of the constructs. A Spearman correlation test was used to explore the correlation between two ranked variables, given the abnormal data distribution, while the mean differences between health disciplines groups were assessed using a paired t-test. The regression model was used to predict factors for readiness at a 5% significance level.

This study was granted ethical approval by the Ethics Committee of the School of Nursing and Public Health at the University of Namibia, under reference number SoN 43/2023. Prior to their involvement, all participants were provided with comprehensive information regarding the study’s aims, procedures, potential risks and benefits. Each participant then provided their written informed consent, demonstrating their voluntary agreement to take part in the research. Participants were explicitly informed of their right to withdraw from the study at any point, without consequence or loss of any benefits to which they were otherwise entitled. The research adhered strictly to the ethical principles delineated in the most recent Declaration of Helsinki, an internationally recognised standard for medical research involving human subjects. This compliance ensured the prevention of participant harm and was maintained by researchers possessing the requisite ethical and scientific expertise.

Table 2 shows the results of each IPL subscale. The overall mean score readiness for the domain teamwork and collaboration skills was high at 4.22 ± 1.02. The area with the highest readiness were students’ readiness to work together to solve patient problems (4.50 ± 0.94), ready for shared learning with other healthcare students to understand clinical problems (4.37 ± 1.00), and learning with other healthcare students to become a more effective member of a healthcare team (4.35 ± 1.11). These findings highlight the importance of teamwork and collaboration in healthcare education and suggest that fostering these skills can lead to improved teamwork and patient outcomes.

The results for the roles and responsibilities domain indicated high IPL readiness (1.54 ± 0.45), driven by a particularly high score for readiness in the professional role (1.83 ± 0.37). However, the overall professional identity readiness was low (1.40 ± 0.27), suggesting participants may not be fully prepared to articulate and execute their various responsibilities within a team setting.

The study aimed at assessing the relationship between domains of IPL and demographic characteristics. To achieve this, a Spearman’s rho correlation analysis was employed (Table 3). The study found a high positive correlation between professional identity and course of study (rho = 0.722; p = 0.010), followed by teamwork and collaboration and gender (rho = 0.650; p = 0.027) and teamwork and collaboration and marital status (rho = 0.641; p = 0.015). A moderate positive correlation was observed between teamwork and collaboration and health-related courses (rho = 0.537; p = 0.005) and professional identity and age (rho = 0.523; p = 0.002). No significant correlation was observed between teamwork and collaboration and age, as well as between course of study and roles and responsibilities (p > 0.05).

Table 4 presents a comparison of the readiness for IPL across various health disciplines. The domain with the highest average score was teamwork and collaboration across all health-related disciplines. The paired t-test results showed a highly statistically significant difference between teamwork and collaboration vs professional identity (t = 41.67) and teamwork and collaboration vs roles and responsibility (t = 39.42), for the Nursing and Public Health group, indicating the greatest magnitude of difference between these subscales in that group. No statistically significant mean difference (p = 0.110) was observed between professional identity and roles and responsibilities within the dentistry discipline.

Table 5 delineates the predictive capacity of identified factors on readiness for IPL among health disciplines. In Model 1, work and collaboration emerged as the most robust predictor of readiness for IPL, accounting for a substantial 83.8% of the variance (R = 0.915; R² = 0.838; F Change = 1208.751, p < 0.001). The 95% confidence interval, 95% CI (4.088–4.352), indicates a strong and statistically significant relationship, suggesting that increased engagement in work and collaboration is associated with a higher readiness for IPL.

Subsequently, Model 3 revealed that roles and responsibilities also served as a statistically significant predictor, explaining an additional 20.8% of the variance in readiness for IPL (R = 0.457; R² = 0.208; F change = 61.605, p < 0.001). This indicates that clarity and understanding of roles and responsibilities significantly contribute to students’ readiness for IPL.

Conversely, Model 2 shows that professional identity did not demonstrate a statistically significant unique contribution to the variance in readiness for IPL (R² = 0.013, p = 0.086), suggesting its individual predictive power was negligible within this analytical framework.

Despite yielding valuable data for the planning, development and review of health professional discipline curricula, this study is subject to several limitations. A primary limitation is the reliance on self-reported data, which introduces the potential for social desirability bias. Participants may have presented themselves in a more favourable light, aligning with perceived social norms and seeking to avoid negative evaluations regarding their readiness for IPL. To mitigate this bias, participants were explicitly informed about the importance of providing honest responses. Furthermore, the survey design allowed participants to complete the questionnaire in the comfort of their own homes, aiming to reduce external pressures and promote more candid disclosures.

For future research, a larger longitudinal study employing observational methods of IPL among health discipline students would provide more insightful data. Such an approach could offer a more robust basis for generalisation to similar educational settings and deliver a more comprehensive understanding of IPL readiness and development.

The study’s findings directly contribute to practice, education and research. Given the significantly higher mean score for teamwork and collaboration, clinical settings are justified in immediately integrating newly graduated students into collaborative teams. For educators, the low professional identity readiness indicates a need to design specific, reflective interprofessional learning activities aimed at bolstering this core skill. Finally, research efforts must now be directed towards developing and evaluating targeted educational interventions to address the professional identity’s role in readiness.