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Aims and objectives This study aimed to evaluate the effect of a virtual simulation education programme with debriefing in undergraduate nursing students. Perceived clinical competence and learning needs of students in a simulation environment were also measured. Background Evidence showed virtual simulation education programmes provided better knowledge acquisition. However, these studies to date did not incorporate virtual simulation in the combination of a debriefing model in nursing students. Design A one‐group pre‐test and post‐test design. Methods 188 final year undergraduate nursing students participated in the study. Linear mixed model analysis was conducted to evaluate the effect of the programme. Results Students have perceived a significant improvement in clinical competence and nursing process. Self‐efficacy has also boosted. Communication and critical thinking were applied better in the traditional clinical environment. Conclusion Perceived clinical competence of Chinese nursing students has significant improvements by using virtual simulation combining a debriefing model during the COVID‐19 period. Virtual simulation met students' learning needs. Future studies should include a control group for comparison and long‐term measurement. Relevance to clinical practice The study provided an innovative clinical learning pedagogy to serve as a potential alternative with traditional clinical practicum during the COVID‐19 period as this is substantially limited.

Objectives In response to the observations that interprofessional education (IPE) is seemingly atheoretical or under‐theorised, this quantitative research seeks to uncover students’ motivational mechanisms which could explain their behavioural and collaborative outcomes using self‐determination theory (SDT). While SDT has been studied in various contexts, its applicability to IPE remains underexplored. This study aims to integrate a new perspective in understanding students’ motivation in IPE by exploring how the fulfilment of a need for sense of autonomy, competence and relatedness is linked to desirable IPE outcomes. Methods Utilising quantitative methods, we involved 255 health care students in Hong Kong from the medical, nursing and pharmacy disciplines enrolled in IPE anticoagulation therapy module. They were invited to respond to the Psychological Need Satisfaction Questionnaire and other measures as part of the post‐test. Results Sense of autonomy emerged as the strongest positive predictor of behavioural (collective dedication, behavioural engagement) and collaboration outcomes (team effectiveness, goal achievement). There were no significant program‐level differences across these outcomes except for behavioural engagement for which nursing students had a higher perception than medicine students. Conclusions We were able to demonstrate that SDT is a meaningful framework in understanding behavioural and collaboration outcomes in IPE. The major theoretical contribution of this study refers to the ability of students’ motivation to explain variance in their behavioural outcomes. That is, sense of autonomy consistently predicted team effectiveness, collective dedication, behavioural engagement and goal achievement. Autonomous motivation among a sample of health care students can explain behavioural outcomes. Theoretical, methodological and practical implications are discussed.