Scientists Define What Makes Healthcare Teams Truly Work Together

Healthcare teams talk constantly about collaboration, but a new analysis argues that the field has long conflated two ideas that need to be separated: interprofessional collaboration, the intent and structure of professionals working together, and interprofessional collaborative practice, the actual enactment of that collaboration at the bedside and in the clinic. In a concept analysis published in Frontiers in Psychology, researchers Nora T. Kakati, Mollie F. Christiansen and Sean M. Reed set out to give the second concept a precise, operational definition that can be observed, implemented and measured in real-world teams. They organized their review using Tofthagen and Fagerstrøm's three-phase framework, analyzing a total of 43 articles published between 2014 and 2025.

From this body of literature, they systematically extracted the antecedents that must be in place before collaborative practice can occur, the attributes that define it while it happens, and the consequences that follow from it. The antecedents they identified read like a checklist for building a functioning team: a collaborative practice-ready workforce, clearly defined roles, communication, trust, and a shared mental model of the patient and the plan of care. The defining attributes of interprofessional collaborative practice, as distilled from the analyzed literature, are shared decision-making, individualized care planning, mutual respect, and reciprocal relationships.

Interprofessional collaboration, the authors argue, describes the intent and structure of working together, whereas interprofessional collaborative practice adds a focus on how collaboration is enacted, sustained and evaluated in day-to-day teams. The consequences identified in the analysis span both team dynamics and patient outcomes. They include enhanced role awareness, team empowerment, improved care outcomes, and mutuality among team members, patients and families.

Notably, the definition the authors propose extends collaboration beyond professionals themselves: it explicitly includes patients and families as participants in shared decision-making and coordinated communication, framing the goal as safe, effective and person-centered care. To ground the abstract concept in observable practice, the analysis identified a concrete exemplar: Structured Interdisciplinary Bedside Rounds. This format, in which the full care team convenes at the patient's bedside, emerged as a practical demonstration of interprofessional collaborative practice, particularly when hierarchical barriers were reduced.

The technical payoff of the analysis is definitional. Building on their findings, the authors define interprofessional collaborative practice as collaborative team functioning enacted through shared decision-making, reciprocal relationships, role clarity, and coordinated communication among healthcare professionals, patients, and families to achieve safe, effective, and person-centered care. This formulation gives researchers and quality-improvement teams something the older, looser term did not: a set of components that can each be operationalized into indicators, audited in practice, and targeted by interventions.

The authors are explicit about the scope of their work. This is a concept analysis, a method for clarifying and distinguishing concepts in the literature, not an evaluation of whether any particular intervention improves patient outcomes. The 43 analyzed articles establish what the concept is understood to involve, what precedes it and what it is associated with, but the paper does not itself test efficacy.

Its stated contribution is foundational: offering a basis for future work operationalizing, implementing and evaluating collaborative team functioning across healthcare settings. By separating intent from enactment and specifying the antecedents, attributes and consequences of the enacted form, the analysis provides a vocabulary that measurement instruments and implementation programs can build on. For clinicians and administrators, the practical reading is that collaborative practice is not a vague culture to be encouraged but a set of identifiable conditions and behaviors: a workforce prepared to collaborate, defined roles, trust, shared mental models, and structures such as bedside rounds that reduce hierarchy and make shared decisions routine.

The authors position their definition as a starting point for the consistent implementation, evaluation and measurement development that the field has lacked, and future studies will determine how well it performs when translated into instruments and interventions across diverse healthcare settings.

Subject of Research: An evolutionary concept analysis defining interprofessional collaborative practice in healthcare teams

Article Title: Operationalizing interprofessional collaborative practice: an evolutionary concept analysis of collaborative team functioning in healthcare

Article References: Kakati, N. T., Christiansen, M. F., & Reed, S. M. (2026). Operationalizing interprofessional collaborative practice: an evolutionary concept analysis of collaborative team functioning in healthcare. Frontiers in Psychology, 17, Article 1898051. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1898051

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1898051

Keywords: interprofessional collaboration, interprofessional collaborative practice, concept analysis, healthcare teams, team functioning, shared decision-making, role clarity, patient-centered care, Rodgers evolutionary method, Structured Interdisciplinary Bedside Rounds, organizational psychology, health services research