Values and Ethics 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

The Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) has identified four interconnected core competencies for collaborative practice in healthcare. These competencies provide a framework for developing collaborative capability throughout a professional career, from student training through to clinical practice. These competencies are:

IPEC Core Competencies

1. Values and ethics
2. Roles and responsibilities
3. Interprofessional communication
4. Teams and teamwork

To develop these competencies, healthcare professionals must cultivate a strong professional identity. They must then be able to integrate this identity into a larger collaborative system. This article focuses on the values and ethics competency.

Values and Ethics Competency

The values and ethics competency calls on team members to maintain a climate of shared values, ethical conduct, and mutual respect.

Shared Values in Practice

Each healthcare profession has its own ethical codes, professional vocabulary, and areas of emphasis. This diversity of perspective helps make interprofessional teams effective. However, different professions also need shared values to function together. Note that having shared values does not mean having identical values. Rather, they signal a common commitment to the patient's interests. Shared values can break down. For instance, one profession may dismiss another's expertise, or the patient autonomy is overridden. In these cases, the quality of care can deteriorate.

Values and Ethics Sub-Competencies

There are eleven sub-competencies within the values and ethics competency. The following sections outline each sub-competency.

1. Promote the Values and Interests of Persons, Populations, and Communities

Healthcare professionals serve people, populations and communities. This sub-competency extends that commitment to include One Health.

One Health is an approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimise the health of people, animals, and ecosystems, acknowledging that these are closely linked and interdependent.

The inclusion of One Health recognises that human health is inseparable from animal and environmental health. For example, antimicrobial resistance is a shared problem across human medicine, veterinary medicine, and agricultural practice. Addressing challenges like these requires professionals from multiple fields to work together.

2. Advocate for Social Justice and Health Equity Across the Lifespan

This sub-competency calls for active advocacy for social justice and health equity, not simply acknowledging that disparities exist. Health service equity must be central to healthcare delivery models, and interprofessional teams must work together to achieve equitable care outcomes, particularly with vulnerable populations. Consider a patient with poorly controlled diabetes. The clinical picture extends beyond the patient's glucose levels. It includes whether they can afford their medication, whether they can get to a pharmacist, and whether their diagnosis has been explained in a way they can fully understand. An interprofessional team can address all these issues in ways that a single clinician, whose focus may be limited to a specific aspect of their condition (e.g., glucose control), cannot.

3. Uphold Dignity, Privacy, Identity, and Autonomy

When multiple professionals are involved in a patient's care, maintaining confidentiality requires robust systems and careful practice. The patient's right to privacy persists even when multiple clinicians are involved in their care. Each team member has a responsibility to distinguish between information that is necessary for care coordination and information that should remain confidential unless the patient consents to its disclosure. Throughout this process, the patient's autonomy and voice must remain central to decision-making.

4. Value Diversity, Identities, Cultures, and Individual Differences

Interprofessional teams bring together different professional perspectives, as well as diverse personal and cultural backgrounds. Understanding the values, attitudes, and beliefs of different cultures can help team members provide more effective, personalised, and culturally sensitive care. A diverse team is also more likely to recognise assumptions or gaps in understanding that might otherwise be overlooked.

5. Value the Expertise of Each Healthcare Profession

Each healthcare profession brings specialist knowledge developed through professional education and training. Valuing this expertise is not about establishing hierarchy. It is about ensuring the team can draw on the full range of competencies available to it. When, for example, a respiratory therapist's airway management skills, a physiotherapist's understanding of mobility, and a clinical psychologist's behavioural expertise are all genuinely recognised, the team is better equipped to address complex health needs.

6. Collaborate with Honesty and Integrity While Striving for Health Equity and Improvements in Health Outcomes

This sub-competency connects ethical behaviour to the goals of interprofessional collaboration. Team members must be open about what they know and what they do not know. They must communicate honestly and take responsibility for their actions. In team settings, this means being willing to raise concerns, even when it is difficult, and owning mistakes rather than hiding them. This kind of integrity and transparency helps build trust within a team.

7. Practice Trust, Empathy, Respect, and Compassion

This sub-competency addresses how team members relate to patients, caregivers, colleagues, and wider populations. Trust is earned when patients and colleagues are consistently treated with respect, and their concerns are taken seriously. Compassion is extended not only to patients but to colleagues navigating difficult situations. These are not abstract ideals. They are daily practices that either strengthen or erode a team's effectiveness.

8. Apply High Standards of Ethical Conduct and Quality

Interprofessional practice does not diminish individual accountability. Every healthcare professional remains responsible for their professional conduct, their scope of practice, and the quality of their contributions. Working in a team does not replace individual obligations, but adds collective accountability on top of them.

9. Maintain Competence in Your Own Profession

Each team member has a professional obligation to bring current, evidence-based knowledge to their work, which in turn strengthens the team as a whole. For example, a physiotherapist who understands the most up-to-date evidence-based approaches to rehabilitation is better able to provide appropriate care to their patients and support their colleagues.

10. Contribute to a Just Culture

Just culture recognises that errors rarely happen in isolation. When something goes wrong, the team should always seek answers to the questions "What system factors contributed?" and "How do we prevent recurrence?" This requires an environment where team members feel safe raising concerns, reporting problems, and asking questions, even when the answer might be uncomfortable. Without psychological safety, patient safety suffers.

11. Support a Workplace Where Differences are Respected, and Well-Being is Prioritised

This sub-competency recognises that healthcare professionals face significant workplace challenges that can affect their ability to provide care. Burnout is a clinical problem. Clinicians who feel depleted are more likely to make errors, communicate less effectively, and disengage from team processes. When teams support each other by distributing workload fairly, making space for different working styles, and acknowledging the emotional weight of difficult cases, they become more sustainable and care quality increases.

Translating Theory into Practice

Consider this scenario: a patient with advanced heart failure has told you they want comfort-focused care. Their adult children want aggressive treatment to continue. The team, including a physician, nurse, physiotherapist, occupational therapist, social worker, chaplain, and pharmacist, must work together to help the family navigate this tension.

The Sub-Competencies in Action

The occupational therapist and physiotherapist, through regular functional sessions, know what the patient values most: sitting with their grandchildren, participating in their religious practices, and managing their personal care with dignity. They can also describe how the patient's ability to engage in these activities has declined. The physician integrates these insights with the medical prognosis, while the nurse speaks to what comfort-focused care can realistically offer. The chaplain helps the family understand the spiritual significance of these activities for the patient. The social worker identifies that a language barrier may have prevented earlier conversations from being fully understood, which is a systemic issue worth raising. The pharmacist ensures medication information reaches the family in a format they can access.

A family meeting is held. Afterwards, the team debriefs, and the following issues are raised:

• The social worker notes a pattern: patients from certain cultural backgrounds tend to receive late referrals for comfort care.
• The occupational therapist wonders whether earlier functional assessments might have led to earlier comfort care conversations.
• The physician acknowledges that time pressure can sometimes mean that patient values are not sufficiently explored.

The team also checks in on each other. The occupational therapist has developed a close relationship with this patient and is grieving their decline. The chaplain creates space for that. This is not a separate activity from care delivery. It is part of what makes the team functional and sustainable.

Reflection

These questions are worth reflecting on individually and as a team:

• Do you feel that colleagues from other disciplines value your professional expertise?
• Have you ever stayed silent when you should have spoken up? What made it feel unsafe to speak up?
• How does your team currently handle errors or near misses? Does the process focus on learning and system improvement, or on individual blame?
• How does your team currently support well-being and recognise signs of burnout?
• Have you encountered a patient whose values or cultural context shaped care decisions in ways your profession might have missed without team input?

Summary

Everything in interprofessional collaboration depends on values and ethics.

Values and ethics underpin interprofessional collaboration. Teams that invest in this foundation are better equipped to navigate the complex ethical, cultural, and interpersonal challenges that arise in clinical practice.

Resources

• Values and ethics competencies: