Purpose: To describe health professions students’ perceived contributions of a compulsory interprofessional education (IPE) course to collaborative competence, interprofessional attitudes, and practice readiness, and to examine whether these perceptions differed by demographic and academic characteristics.

Methods: This cross-sectional survey invited all 470 eligible Year 2 and Year 3 students in the nursing, midwifery, nutrition, and medical laboratory technology diploma programs of a health polytechnic in Eastern Indonesia, all of whom had taken or were taking the same 28-hour compulsory IPE course. Of 324 respondents, 307 were analyzed. Students completed a 110-item researcher-developed questionnaire comprising 3 scales. Group differences were examined using analysis of variance, Welch t tests, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), and linear models with HC3 robust standard errors and Holm-adjusted pairwise comparisons.

Results: Mean scores (possible range, 1–4) were 2.49 (standard deviation [SD], 0.71) for collaborative competence, 2.50 (SD, 0.74) for interprofessional attitudes, and 2.51 (SD, 0.73) for practice readiness. In the MANOVA, professional program was the only significant factor (Pillai trace=0.179; F[9,894]=6.31; P<0.001). Nursing students reported higher adjusted scores than students in each of the other programs (vs medical laboratory technology, B=0.57 to 0.64; Holm-adjusted P<0.001). The 3 scales were highly correlated (r=0.894 to 0.923; heterotrait-monotrait ratio, 0.909 to 0.938).

Conclusion: Students’ perceptions of a shared IPE course differed by professional program despite an identical curriculum, for reasons not captured in this study, and the 3 scales could not be empirically distinguished. These cross-sectional self-report findings do not establish IPE effectiveness or the superiority of any program.