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Teams and Teamwork in Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice

Original Editor - Ewa Jaraczewska based on the course by Angela Patterson

Top Contributors - Ewa Jaraczewska and Jess Bell  

Introduction

Healthcare professionals routinely work alongside colleagues from other disciplines, exchanging information and contributing to joint decisions about care. However, effective interprofessional teamwork does not happen by default. It requires specific knowledge, skills, and attitudes applied intentionally.

IPEC Core Competencies

The Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) has established four interdependent core competencies to support collaborative practice throughout a professional's career, from early training through to clinical practice. These competencies are:[1]

  • Values and ethics
  • Roles and responsibilities
  • Interprofessional communication
  • Teams and teamwork

Together, these domains highlight the skills, knowledge, and attitudes needed for effective teamwork. This page focuses on the teams and teamwork domain.

Teams and Teamwork Competency

The teams and teamwork competency calls on healthcare professionals to "[a]pply values and principles of the science of teamwork to adapt one's own role in a variety of team settings."[2]

Teams and Teamwork Sub-competencies

This competency contains ten sub-competencies that span team development, team processes, and team performance.[3] These sub-competencies are discussed in the following sections.

1. Describing Evidence-Informed Processes of Team Development and Team Practices

Knowing how teams develop and what makes them effective allows team building to be approached intentionally rather than left to chance.[3] Teams move through predictable developmental stages: forming, storming, norming, and performing.[4] A fifth stage, adjourning, describes the point at which a team disbands.[5] New teams typically start with politeness (forming) and move into a phase of friction and conflict (storming) as members negotiate roles and approaches.[6] With good management, they eventually settle into productive working patterns (norming and performing).[7][8] Recognising these stages matters. Conflicts that occur early in a team's life are a normal and necessary part of formation, not a sign that the team is failing.[4]

Conditions that support team effectiveness include:[9]

  • clear and shared goals
  • defined roles with built-in flexibility
  • psychological safety
  • balanced participation
  • agreed processes for decision-making and conflict resolution
  • regular team reflection

Every clinician should actively help to create these conditions.

2. Appreciating Diversity Within the Team

Interprofessional teams bring together people with different training, professional cultures, and assumptions about care.[10] Research shows that diverse teams can outperform homogeneous teams on complex clinical problems, but only when that diversity is valued and leveraged.[11]

Appreciation of diversity goes beyond acknowledgement. It means seeking out the perspectives of colleagues whose backgrounds differ from one's own.[12] It means recognising that professional disagreement may reflect valuable differences in viewpoint rather than one person being right and another wrong. It is about designing team processes so that all members can contribute.[13]

3. Practising Collective Reasoning, Problem-Solving, and Decision-Making

Interprofessional teams engage in three distinct but related processes: reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making.[3]

Team reasoning is the collective analysis of complex situations. Unlike individual reasoning, multiple professional viewpoints must be integrated. Assumptions can be challenged, which reduces the risk of individual blind spots shaping care.[14]

Problem-solving is most effective when it follows a clear structure that includes: defining the problem clearly, generating options, evaluating them, selecting an approach, implementing it, and then reviewing the outcome. Effective teams resist the instinct to jump straight to solutions.[15]

Decision-making involves choosing between options. There are different ways teams can make decisions (e.g., leader authority, majority vote, seeking consensus). The decision-making method chosen must fit the situation. Urgent decisions require clear authority and rapid action. When decisions affect everyone, consensus building may be more appropriate. Effective teams consciously choose the decision-making method rather than defaulting to whoever speaks loudest.[16]

4. Using Shared Leadership

Traditional hierarchical leadership is often inadequate for interprofessional teams.[3] Shared leadership recognises that different team members may take the lead at different times, depending on the clinical situation and their specific expertise.[17]

For example, a pharmacist may lead on medication reconciliation, a physiotherapist on rehabilitation planning and mobility goals, a social worker on complex family dynamics or discharge barriers, and an occupational therapist on how a health condition affects daily function. Even when there is a recognised team leader, all members exercise leadership within their area of expertise.[3]

Shared leadership requires team members to be comfortable both leading and following.[17] It requires open conversation about who is leading on what. Team members must also trust other members to lead.[18]

5. Applying Interprofessional Conflict Management Methods

Conflict in interprofessional teams cannot be avoided, and when handled well, it can strengthen team functioning.[7] Different professional training produces different priorities, and these differences are part of what makes interprofessional teams valuable. They can also be a source of friction. Common sources of interprofessional conflict include role ambiguity, communication failures, power imbalances, and resource competition.[19] Identifying the actual source of conflict helps determine an appropriate response.

When managed constructively, conflict can surface important issues, prevent groupthink, and produce better solutions than any single perspective would generate. Effective teams do not avoid disagreement. They work through it.[3]

6. Reflecting on Self and Team Performance

Reflection is the deliberate process of examining what happened and why, what worked and did not work, and what could be done differently next time. Reflection should happen at both the individual and the team level.

Without regular reflection, teams repeat mistakes and miss opportunities to build on what works. With it, teams can adapt and improve over time. For example, structured debriefs after difficult cases help teams build reflection into routine clinical practice.[20]

If you would like to learn more about reflective practice, see: Clinical Reflection.

7. Sharing Team Accountability for Outcomes

In addition to individual professional accountability, interprofessional teams are collectively responsible for outcomes.

When a preventable adverse event occurs, a team operating with shared accountability examines what happened together. [21] The team is looking at handovers, documentation, communication patterns, and other system factors. Individual team members do not retreat into defending their own actions while assigning blame elsewhere.[22][3] Shared accountability also means that team members actively support each other, ensuring colleagues have the information, time, and resources they need to contribute effectively. It does not eliminate individual responsibility, but sits alongside it.[23]

8. Facilitating Team Coordination

Coordination is what makes safe and effective care possible across a team. It involves organising activities so that information moves between team members, schedules align, and tasks are not duplicated or missed.[24][25] When coordination breaks down, patients can be harmed.

Common coordination failures include conflicting instructions from different clinicians, duplicate investigations, and critical information not reaching the team member who needs it. These failures are preventable.[26][27]

Effective coordination depends on practical solutions, such as team huddles to share priorities, shared care plans in electronic records, standardised handover protocols, and clear expectations about how information flows between team members. Coordination needs to be built into how the team operates, not left to chance.[28]

9. Operating from a Shared Framework that Supports Resiliency, Well-being, Safety, and Efficacy

Healthcare settings are high-pressure environments, and that pressure can affect both patient safety and the well-being of the professionals working in them.[3][29]

Effective teams adopt shared frameworks that support resilience, safety, and well-being.[2][25] Examples include empowering any team member, regardless of seniority, to call a safety "timeout" if they have concerns; debriefing after traumatic cases; ensuring breaks are taken; and respecting boundaries around working hours.[3][30]

These frameworks do not emerge by themselves; they require focused discussion and commitment from all involved. Once established, they influence how team members behave and create conditions that support the safety of both clinicians and patients.

10. Discussing Organisational Structures, Policies, Practices, Resources, Access to Information, and Timing Issues

Interprofessional teams work within larger organisational contexts. Each organisation has specific structures, policies, resources, information systems, and scheduling realities that shape how a team operates.[31]

Awareness of these factors helps teams work effectively within real constraints and push for change where possible. For example, when scheduling makes it difficult for certain team members to attend team meetings, the team can advocate for adjustments or create workarounds that preserve those members' contributions. When information systems fail to support coordination, the team can push for change.[3]

Recognising which organisational factors are fixed constraints and which can be changed is a practical team skill.[3][32]

The Community Health Centre Team in Action

An interprofessional primary care team, which includes a physician, nurse practitioner, nurses, pharmacist, social worker, community health worker, physiotherapist, occupational therapist, and care coordinator, serves a diverse urban population. After six months together, the team can look back on the conflicts they experienced earlier and recognise them as normal team development rather than signs of failure. The occupational therapist, who previously felt excluded from care planning, is now actively involved. Earlier friction between the pharmacist and physician over medication expectations has been worked through and has become a clearer, shared process.

When the team gathers to discuss a patient with poorly controlled diabetes, no single clinician dominates. The pharmacist identifies medication cost as a barrier to adherence. The occupational therapist flags that the patient's work schedule makes medication timing difficult. The social worker recognises depression affecting self-care. The community health worker describes family caregiving dynamics. The physiotherapist notes that transportation barriers have stopped the patient from attending exercise sessions. Together, they build a care plan no individual could have constructed alone.

Beyond this case, the team's wider practice illustrates the same principles. Leadership moves fluidly: the care coordinator runs meetings, the physiotherapist leads on chronic pain management, and the pharmacist takes the lead on medication reconciliation. Team members acknowledge the limits of their own expertise. When errors occur, they examine the system together rather than assigning blame.

Reflection

Take a few minutes to think through the following:

  1. Which of the conditions for team effectiveness: clear goals, defined roles, psychological safety, balanced participation, agreed processes, and regular reflection, have been present in a team you have worked in? Which were missing? What was the clinical impact of that gap?
  2. Have you ever witnessed a team member's perspective being overlooked or dismissed because of their professional role, their seniority, or their communication style? What was lost as a result? What structural change would have made their contribution possible?
  3. Reflect on shared leadership in a team you have worked in. Was leadership genuinely distributed based on expertise, or did it default to seniority or professional hierarchy? Can you identify a moment where you, or someone else, held back from leading when your expertise was most relevant?
  4. Think of a conflict you witnessed or experienced in your team. Was it handled constructively or destructively? What was the underlying source? Was it role ambiguity, a power imbalance, or a communication breakdown? What would a constructive resolution have required from each person involved?

Summary

Effective interprofessional teams do not form by chance. They develop through predictable stages, and early conflict is a normal part of that process, not a sign of failure. The ten sub-competencies in this domain build on the foundations laid by the previous three: values and ethics, role clarity, and effective communication. Together, these four domains form an interconnected framework, oriented towards a single goal: better health outcomes for patients and communities.[3]

Resources

  • This video provides more information on the teams and teamwork competency:

[33]


References

  1. ↑ Mohammed CA, Anand R, Saleena Ummer V. Interprofessional Education (IPE): A framework for introducing teamwork and collaboration in health professions curriculum. Med J Armed Forces India. 2021 Feb;77(Suppl 1):S16-S21.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 IPEC Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice: Version 3. 2023. Available from https://www.ipecollaborative.org/ipec-core-competencies (last accessed 29 April 2026).
  3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 Patterson A. Teams and Teamwork in Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice Course. Physiopedia Plus, 2026.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Roy LT. A Team approach to professional development and accountability. Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology. 2019 Dec 1;47(4):332-5.
  5. ↑ Kaelin VC, Tewari M, Benouar S and Lindgren H. Developing teamwork: transitioning between stages in human-agent collaboration. Front. Comput. Sci. 2024;6:1455903.
  6. ↑ Djamali A, Aziz F, Clark D. Conflict Management, Negotiations, and the Art of Hearing and Saying No in Academic Medicine. InEmerging Leaders in Academic Medicine: A Concise Guide to Navigating the Path to Leadership Success 2025 Feb 8 (pp. 79-96). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Based D, Alqurashi S, Alnjjar B, Alasif AA, Alsaif HS, Alamri GM, Alanazi AO, Almutairi LM, Hijazi AA, Halman HH, Almutiri AF. Resolving Interprofessional Team Conflicts in Healthcare: Evidence, Challenges, and Future Directions. TPM–Testing, Psychometrics, Methodology in Applied Psychology. 2025 Sep 15;32(S6 (2025): Posted 15 September):1868-74.
  8. ↑ Schilling S, Armaou M, Morrison Z, Carding P, Bricknell M, Connelly V. Understanding teamwork in rapidly deployed interprofessional teams in intensive and acute care: A systematic review of reviews. Plos one. 2022 Aug 18;17(8):e0272942.
  9. ↑ Patil R, Raheja DK, Nair L, Deshpande A, Mittal A. The power of psychological safety: investigating its impact on team learning, team efficacy, and team productivity. The Open Psychology Journal. 2023 Aug 8;16(1).
  10. ↑ Cantaert GR, Pype P, Valcke M, Lauwerier E. Interprofessional Identity in Health and Social Care: Analysis and Synthesis of the Assumptions and Conceptions in the Literature. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Nov 10;19(22):14799.
  11. ↑ Swartz TH, Palermo AS, Masur SK, Aberg JA. The Science and Value of Diversity: Closing the Gaps in Our Understanding of Inclusion and Diversity. J Infect Dis. 2019 Aug 20;220(220 Suppl 2):S33-S41.
  12. ↑ Stahl GK, Maznevski ML. Unraveling the effects of cultural diversity in teams: A retrospective of research on multicultural work groups and an agenda for future research. J Int Bus Stud. 2021;52(1):4-22.
  13. ↑ Dorison CA, Minson JA. You can’t handle the truth! Conflict counterparts over-estimate each other’s feelings of self-threat. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 2022 May 1;170:104147.
  14. ↑ Lee CY, Lai HY, Lee CH, Chen MM, Yau SY. Collaborative clinical reasoning: a scoping review. PeerJ. 2024 Mar 6;12:e17042.
  15. ↑ McLaney E, Morassaei S, Hughes L, Davies R, Campbell M, Di Prospero L. A framework for interprofessional team collaboration in a hospital setting: Advancing team competencies and behaviours. Healthc Manage Forum. 2022 Mar;35(2):112-117.
  16. ↑ Légaré F, Stacey D, Pouliot S, Gauvin FP, Desroches S, Kryworuchko J, Dunn S, Elwyn G, Frosch D, Gagnon MP, Harrison MB, Pluye P, Graham ID. Interprofessionalism and shared decision-making in primary care: a stepwise approach towards a new model. J Interprof Care. 2011 Jan;25(1):18-25.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Curșeu PL, van Rijswijk J, Schruijer SGL. Collaborative and Shared Leadership Dynamics in Healthcare Action Teams: A Systematic Literature Review. J Healthc Leadersh. 2025 Dec 31;17:877-899.
  18. ↑ Forsyth C, Mason B. Shared leadership and group identification in healthcare: The leadership beliefs of clinicians working in interprofessional teams. Journal of Interprofessional Care. 2017 May 4;31(3):291-9.
  19. ↑ Dietl JE, Derksen C, Keller FM, Lippke S. Interdisciplinary and interprofessional communication intervention: How psychological safety fosters communication and increases patient safety. Front Psychol. 2023 Jun 15;14:1164288.
  20. ↑ Koshy K, Limb C, Gundogan B, Whitehurst K, Jafree DJ. Reflective practice in health care and how to reflect effectively. Int J Surg Oncol (N Y). 2017 Jul;2(6):e20.
  21. ↑ Kusnoor AV, Gill AC, Hatfield CL, Ordonez N, Dello Stritto R, Landrum P, Teal CR, Ismail N. An interprofessional standardized patient case for improving collaboration, shared accountability, and respect in team-based family discussions. MedEdPORTAL. 2019 Jan 4;15:10791.
  22. ↑ Artinger FM, Marx-Fleck S, Junker NM, Gigerenzer G, Artinger S, van Dick R. Coping with uncertainty: The interaction of psychological safety and authentic leadership in their effects on defensive decision making. Journal of Business Research. 2025 Mar 1;190:115240.
  23. ↑ Patel VL, Cytryn KN, Shortliffe EH, Safran C. The collaborative health care team: the role of individual and group expertise. Teaching and learning in medicine. 2000 Jul 1;12(3):117-32.
  24. ↑ Liu P, Lyndon A, Holl JL, Johnson J, Bilimoria KY, Stey AM. Barriers and facilitators to interdisciplinary communication during consultations: a qualitative study. BMJ Open. 2021 Sep 2;11(9):e046111.
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 Weller JM, Mahajan R, Fahey-Williams K, Webster CS. Teamwork matters: team situation awareness to build high-performing healthcare teams, a narrative review. British journal of anaesthesia. 2024 Apr 1;132(4):771-8.
  26. ↑ Zachary W, Maulitz RC, Zachary DA. What Causes Care Coordination Problems? A Case for Microanalysis. EGEMS (Wash DC). 2016 Aug 1;4(3):1230.
  27. ↑ Patel RH, Goldin J. Medical Error Prevention and Root Cause Analysis. [Updated 2026 Jan 31]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2026 Jan-. Available from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK570638/ [last accessed 26.4.2026]
  28. ↑ Pimentel CB, Snow AL, Carnes SL, Shah NR, Loup JR, Vallejo-Luces TM, Madrigal C, Hartmann CW. Huddles and their effectiveness at the frontlines of clinical care: a scoping review. J Gen Intern Med. 2021 Sep;36(9):2772-2783.
  29. ↑ Foglia E, Ferrario L, Garagiola E. Enhancing healthcare workers' safety and well-being through a comprehensive qualitative analysis across hospital settings. Sci Rep. 2026 Jan 13;16(1):5084.
  30. ↑ Arriaga AF, Szyld D, Pian-Smith MCM. Real-Time Debriefing After Critical Events: Exploring the Gap Between Principle and Reality. Anesthesiol Clin. 2020 Dec;38(4):801-820.
  31. ↑ Geese F, Schmitt KU. Interprofessional Collaboration in Complex Patient Care Transition: A Qualitative Multi-Perspective Analysis. Healthcare (Basel). 2023 Jan 27;11(3):359.
  32. ↑ Zajac S, Woods A, Tannenbaum S, Salas E, Holladay CL. Overcoming challenges to teamwork in healthcare: a team effectiveness framework and evidence-based guidance. Frontiers in Communication. 2021 Mar 17;6:606445.
  33. ↑ Health IPE. IPE Core Competency Domain 4: Teams and Teamwork. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?IRIkJKppR_8 [last accessed 27/4/2026]
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