The Moderating Role of Team Conflict on Teams of Nursing Students

Abstract

Inter-professional education has become a widespread trend in healthcare education around the world. This study examined whether conflict moderated the correlation between swift trust and creativity for nursing students on teams in inter-professional education courses in Taiwan. A cross-sectional survey study with comparative, quantitative analysis was conducted to describe relationships between the studied variables. This study collected self-report data from 270 nursing students who attended interdisciplinary team-based capstone courses, and this study divided them into 54 teams. Each team consisted of five members. The study results showed cognition-based team swift trust had a positive correlation with team creativity. The negative association was revealed between relationship conflict and team creativity. Moderation models demonstrated that relationship conflict (95% C.I. [−0.70, −0.21]) negatively moderated the correlation between cognition-based swift trust and team creativity among nursing student teams. This research found that greater levels of cognition-based swift trust may enhance nursing students’ team creativity in inter-professional education courses. However, relationship conflicts may limit the positive outcomes of that association. Nursing educators should incorporate conflict management particularly aiming at relationship conflicts into their interdisciplinary nursing courses to support creative outcomes.