What is important to know about Interprofessional Collaborative Practice (ICP)?

The World Health Organization (WHO) does not explicitly define interprofessional collaborative practice but offers the following statement - “Collaborative practice in healthcare occurs when multiple health workers from different professional backgrounds provide comprehensive services by working with patients, their families, careers and communities to deliver the highest quality of care across settings”. (WHO, 2010). This statement is widely used when a definition is requested.

At UIC, we recognize that ICP is a complex phenomenon requiring a broader explanation of its key attributes and outcomes. Collaborative practice is a specific form of teamwork that emerges from and relies on the knowledge and skills of 2 or more team members which may include health and social care professionals, public health professionals, communities, patients, and families. Interprofessional collaborative practice is the above with providers from different professions. The traditional hierarchy and silos between health professions has contributed to a lack of collaboration and poor outcomes.  At UIC we promote interprofessional collaborative practice as a critical component of high-quality healthcare.

The goals of interprofessional collaborative practice are achieved when teams achieve a level of high reliability and produce consistent outcomes. High reliability teams (HRT) contribute to to the achievement of the Quintuple Aim (insert Nundy 2022) improve population health, enhance care experiences, address health equity, promote workforce well-being, and reduce costs. High reliability team achieve these outcomes through task-relevant knowledge, the development of a shared mental model and mutual trust and respect, high levels of communication, and adapting to the environment. Such teams are built on relationships and include team members with high task interdependency and shared values. Teams must be provided with adequate resources – time, space, information, and authority - to achieve optimal results.

To view Key Features of Collaborative Practice as a pdf document, please click here.

Key Features of Collaborative Practice Heading link

  • Collaborative Practices put patients at the center of care which helps providers focus away from their individual preferences and needs, potentially mitigating profession centric thinking and behavior.
  • Collaborative practice recognizes the need to simultaneously achieve Quintuple Aims (Nundy et al., 2022) which includes improved health outcomes, patient experience, provider well-being, reduced per capita cost of care and achievement of health equity.
  • Collaborative practice takes advantage of the contributions of “core” (continuously involved) members, “connected” (involved regularly but on an as needed basis) members and “ad hoc” (involved to meet a specific need) members within and across settings.
  • Collaborative practice addresses the biological, psychological and social determinants of health.
  • Competencies are comprehensively defined by IPEC Core Competencies. Interprofessional Education Collaborative. (2023). IPEC Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice: Version 3. Washington, DC: Interprofessional Education Collaborative
  • Collaborators work together on a level playing field free from hierarchy and power differentials.
  • Collaborators have a shared mental model of their mission and goals, mutual trust and respect for all team members, and effective interpersonal communication skills.
  • Collaborators recognize that team leadership is essential to high functioning teams and that the designated leader can change depending on the team’s current priorities.
  • Mutual trust and respect depend upon each provider understanding each other’s roles and responsibilities, maintaining contemporary expertise, being honest and clear about motivations and goals, and delivering results. (From Stephen R. Covey – The Speed of Trust, 2006).
  • Inclusion of both clinical and non-clinical health-related work, such as diagnosis, treatment, surveillance, health communications, management and sanitation engineering. (WHO – Framework for Action on Interprofessional Education & Collaborative Practice 2010)
  • The structure and regulation of the health care workforce and the structure of the current US health care system create barriers to collaborative practice. “The present division of labour between the various health professions is a social construction resulting from complex historical processes around scientific progress, technological development, economic relations, political interests, and cultural schemes of values and beliefs. The dynamic nature of professional boundaries is underscored by the continuous struggles between different professional groups to delimit their respective spheres of practice. The division of labour at any specific time and in any specific society is much more the result of these social forces than of any inherent attribute of health-related work.” From Frenk, J., Chen, L., Bhutta, Z.A., Cohen, J., Crisp, N., et al (2010) Health professionals for a new century: transforming education to strengthen health systems in an interdependent world. Lancet. 2010-12-04, Volume 376, Issue 9756, Pages 1923-1958.
  • Difficulty accepting the superiority of collective competence and the recognition of ultimate decision-making authority by patients (or their legal surrogates) challenges the core value of individual competence that has been dominant within health professions for more than 100 years.
  • Differing conceptualizations of health and function among health professions interferes with setting priorities and decision making.