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Little is known about how collaborative curricular activities can help students learn about scientific evidence in occupational therapy (OT) and occupational therapy assistant (OTA) programs. We created and measured collaborative learning in evidence-based practice activities to enhance partnership building and intraprofessional collaboration among students in OT and OTA programs. Thirty-three OT students and 26 OTA students enrolled in a didactic course (Phase I) and an intraprofessional collaborative learning activity (Phase II) participated in this quasi-experimental repeated measure study. The students’ ability of how to read scholarly articles and their perceived importance and perceived ability to engage in intraprofessional collaboration were examined at three time points. Improvements were found in the OT students’ perceived importance of intraprofessional roles/responsibilities and the OTA students’ perceived ability to engage in intraprofessional communication after completing the Phase I didactic course. Both the OT and OTA students’ perceived ability to work as a team, identify their roles/responsibilities, communicate with peers, and their ability to read scholarly articles improved after the Phase II intraprofessional collaboration. Students valued the opportunity to gain collaboration experience and share different perspectives. They indicated they would have preferred to spend more time on the activities. The findings suggest that targeted learning activities can improve OT and OTA students’ ability to engage in evidence-based practice and their perceived importance and ability to engage in intraprofessional collaboration. Effective partnerships and intraprofessional collaboration are best introduced within academic programs.

Occupational therapy students need to develop self-efficacy for therapeutic use of self in practice. This longitudinal study examined Norwegian occupational therapy students’ self-efficacy for therapeutic use of self over a 16-month period and investigated predictors of their end-point self-efficacy. One hundred and eleven students from two universities completed a self-efficacy questionnaire related to the use of self after a workshop, and at 3-month, 10-month, and 16-month follow-up. The students’ self-efficacy development was analyzed with linear mixed effect models, while factors associated with self-efficacy were investigated with linear regressions. The students from both universities showed a linear increase in self-efficacy for therapeutic mode use (p < 0.001), recognizing clients’ interpersonal characteristics (p < 0.001), and managing interpersonal events (p < 0.001). However, for the students from University 1 the largest increase occurred in an early phase, whereas for the students from University 2 the largest increase occurred in a late phase. Only baseline scores were associated with the end-point measure at 16-month follow-up. The study indicates that students’ self-efficacy for therapeutic use of self increased during the follow-up period and adds to the knowledge about occupational therapy students’ self-efficacy development related to understanding and managing client-therapist interactions.