Introduction: Students’ peer relatedness is vital to their academic achievement and engagement. However, little is known about the mechanisms that can explain such a link in health professions education, especially in interprofessional education (IPE), where interprofessional socialization is promoted. To address the research gap in understanding the social dynamics embedded within IPE and their impact on crucial motivational outcomes, this study examines how peer relatedness (belonging) mediates the link between motivation (both intrinsic and extrinsic) and engagement in IPE. Methods: Data from 841 students enrolled in IPE from Medicine, Nursing, Social Work, Chinese Medicine, Pharmacy, Speech and Hearing Sciences, Clinical Psychology, and Food and Nutritional Science from a university in Hong Kong were used in this study. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation were collected at baseline, while peer relatedness need satisfaction and engagement and disaffection in IPE were assessed after four weeks. We used a fully latent structural equation model to examine whether peer relatedness mediated the link between motivation and engagement in IPE. Results: Our results indicate that intrinsic motivation at baseline significantly increases engagement and reduces disaffection four weeks later, while extrinsic motivation shows the opposite effect. Crucially, the adaptive role of motivation to engagement was significantly mediated by relatedness from IPE teams. Specifically, the effect of students’ motivation on their engagement/disaffection in IPE can be partially explained by their relatedness within IPE teams. Conclusion: This study underscores the importance of peer relatedness in IPE, highlighting its role in harnessing student motivation to foster student engagement. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the psychosocial mechanisms in IPE and highlight the value of collaborative learning environments in fulfilling students’ need for relatedness, thereby fostering

Objectives: Interprofessional education (IPE) harnesses the power of teams to facilitate collaborative learning across disciplines. However, prior research has not paid sufficient attention to the role of team-level factors on IPE outcomes, posing a major theoretical and methodological limitation. In response to this, using social interdependence theory (SIT), this study aimed to delineate the independent contributions of both team-level and student-level interprofessional attitudes (teamwork, roles, and responsibilities; patient-centeredness; and community-centeredness) in predicting IPE collaboration outcomes (goal achievement, team effectiveness, and team performance) employing multi-level analysis.Methods: To test whether interprofessional attitudes at the team and student levels predict IPE collaboration outcomes, conducted multilevel modeling. We used the pretest and posttest data from 323 healthcare students in Hong Kong from Chinese medicine, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and social work programmes enrolled in the IPE Cancer module.Results: Among the interprofessional attitudes, “teamwork, roles, and responsibilities” was found to be the best predictor of IPE outcomes, both at the student and team levels. Students who recognized the benefits of shared learning had better goal achievement and team effectiveness. Furthermore, teams that emphasized shared learning also had better overall team performance.Conclusions: Students' attitudes towards teamwork, roles, and responsibilities in interprofessional collaborative practice, both at the student and team levels, are important to attaining positive student- and team-level outcomes. The study contributes to the expansion of existing knowledge in medical education, theoretically, by adopting SIT as a lens through which collaborative learning in healthcare teams can be understood, and methodologically, by applying multi-level approaches and delineating important student- and team-level predictors of IPE outcomes. Copyright