A methodology to evaluate the effectiveness of interprofessional education strategies based on the Medical Research Council (MRC) framework among vocational healthcare students in China

Interprofessional education (IPE) is rapidly becoming a core element of health professions preparation programs worldwide, but the effectiveness of different IPE strategies and their impacts in different regions and populations remain unclear, especially in the vocational education setting. This article describes the overall research design including the development, testing and preliminary evaluation of the IPE education interventions for Chinese vocational healthcare students, following the procedure outlined in the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) framework for developing and implementing complex interventions in healthcare. The objective is to develop and adapt role-based IPE strategies and evaluate their feasibility and effectiveness on interprofessional competencies of vocational healthcare students in China, with nursing students being our focus.•This study adopts a mixed-methods approach to develop two IPE strategies related to role interaction (role-taking and role-playing) in comparison to one conventional IPE strategy (pure group discussion) and investigate the different effectiveness in vocational healthcare students' attitudes to IPE, perception of professional roles, and interprofessional collaborative competencies by three valid scales.•The study is divided into four stages: development, feasibility testing, evaluation and final experimental verification.•This study helps provide scientific and appropriate IPE strategies for vocational healthcare educators, so as to improve the interprofessional learning and collaborative ability of vocational healthcare students.