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Background The complexity of healthcare and concurrent advances in technology have promoted Interprofessional Education (IPE) in healthcare schools to prepare students to collaborate on interdisciplinary teams. Since 2016, healthcare curricula in Taiwan have incorporated IPE-based capstone courses to enhance creativity. To better understand the predictors of team creativity could help educators improve IPE and outcomes for nursing students and patients. Purpose To determine whether nursing students' demographic characteristics, individual creativity, and perceived team interaction behaviors, team swift trust, team conflict, and team task interdependence may predict high perceived team creativity in IPE settings. Methods A cross-sectional study design included nursing students (N = 99) at a science and technology university in Taiwan. Data from self-report questionnaires included variables for demographic characteristics, individual creativity, and perceived team characteristics. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed predictors of high perceived team creativity. Results Nursing students who perceived high team creativity also perceived higher interaction behaviors and lower process conflict than those who perceived less creativity. Spontaneous communication and team task conflict predicted high perceived team creativity. Conclusions Nursing educators could increase team creativity in IPE by encouraging spontaneous communication and constructive task-oriented conflict management. This may benefit patient outcomes in the future.

Background Recently, empirical researchers have observed direct associations between conflict and interaction behaviors within organizational teams. However, research concerning indirect links between conflict and interaction behaviors on interdisciplinary teams in nursing school is scant, particularly in Taiwan. Objectives The aim of this study was to explore the relationships among various types of conflict and interaction behaviors on interdisciplinary nursing education teams. Design, setting, and participants This study utilized a cross-sectional, quantitative, descriptive design. The authors collected survey data from 99 nursing students who participated in 18-week capstone courses of small interdisciplinary groups collaborating to design healthcare products in Taiwan during 2018 and 2019. Methods Questionnaires assessed the nursing students' perceptions about their teams' conflicts (of task, process, and relationship), and interaction behaviors (constructive controversy, helping behaviors, and spontaneous communication). The authors used descriptive statistics to compare demographics, conflict scores, and interaction behavior scores for collocated and distributed interdisciplinary teams. A Pearson's analysis identified correlations among the variables and their components, and the SPSS PROCESS macro showed moderating effects of spontaneous communication on the relationship between distributed team and conflict subscales. Results After confirming the distributed team experienced significantly more conflict than the collocated team, we found significant negative correlations between constructive controversy and both process conflict and relationship conflict on the distributed team. Another interaction behavior, spontaneous communication, had a moderating effect on the relationships between the distributed team and both task conflict and relationship conflict. Conclusion In interdisciplinary educational settings for nursing students, spontaneous communication may moderate the types of conflict that distributed teams are more likely than collocated teams to experience. Constructive controversy may be especially effective at mitigating conflict on distributed teams. Nursing educators may refer to these insights to improve outcomes for educational interdisciplinary healthcare teams.