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INTERDISCIPLINARITY IN HEALTH AND COMPREHENSIVE
CARE: CHALLENGES AND POTENTIAL OF INTERPROFESSIONAL
COLLABORATION
Clemilde Clara de Sousa1
Bárbara Monique Alves Desidério2
Cláudia Gonçalves Prado3
Marileuza Maria de França Vasconcelos4
Iolanda Darc Martins5
Viviane Cristina Vieira da Silva6
Gelia Cristina Farias de Souza7
Mírian Mendonça Gomes Siqueira8
Luchesy Nogueira Viana9
Abstract: Interdisciplinarity constitutes a relevant strategy for responding to the complexity of health
needs and overcoming fragmented care practices. This article aims to refl ect on interdisciplinarity in
health as a foundation for interprofessional collaboration and the construction of comprehensive care,
discussing its potential and the challenges related to communication, teamwork, leadership, and co-
responsibility for care. The refl ection highlights that the presence of different professional categories
1 Psicóloga, especialista em psicologia da saúde e Graduada em Educação Física.
2 Mestre em Saúde Coletiva
3 Enfermeira, especialista em UTI e emergência e urgência.
4 Enfermeira, especialista em Atenção Saúde e Envelhecimento.
5 Especialista em Centro cirúrgico e CME. Enfermagem do trabalho.
6 Enfermeira, especialista em enfermagem cirúrgica HC/UFPE, Mestre em Ciências da Saúde/
UFPE, Enfermeira do Hospital Universitário Lauro Wanderley/UFPB.
7 Graduação em Enfermagem. Especialista em UTI e emergência e urgência.
8 Enfermeira, Especialista em Enfermagem Obstétrica e Mestre em Educação.
9 Psicóloga, especialista em Neuropsicologia, Psicologia Hospitalar, Psicopedagogia Clínica e
Institucional, MBA em gestão de pessoas e Mestranda em Psicologia Organizacional.
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in a service does not, in isolation, characterize an interdisciplinary practice; the effective integration
of knowledge, skills, and decisions around shared objectives is necessary. Effective communication,
clarity of roles, trust, collaborative leadership, recognition of professional competencies, and person-
centered care stand out as essential elements for strengthening collaboration. Although evidence
points to favorable repercussions on quality and certain care outcomes, challenges related to
professional hierarchies, power inequalities, service organization, resource availability, and training
for collective work persist. It is concluded that strengthening interdisciplinarity requires changes in
training, management, and professional relationships, so that the diversity of knowledge is converted
into integrated, shared care oriented towards people’s needs.
Keywords: Interprofessional Relationships; Patient Care Team; Comprehensive Health Care; Health
Communication; Patient-Centered Care.
INTRODUCTION
The growing complexity of health needs has highlighted the limits of care models organized
in a fragmented manner, in which different professionals work on specifi c portions of the health-
disease process without necessarily integrating their practices. Population aging, the higher prevalence
of chronic conditions, multimorbidity, and the coexistence of biological, psychological, and social
needs demand responses that go beyond the capacity of a single profession or disciplinary fi eld. In
this context, interdisciplinarity gains centrality as a possibility of articulating different knowledge
and practices around common objectives and the needs of the people assisted.
The presence of multiple professions in a health service, however, does not characterize
an interdisciplinary practice in itself. The literature shows that the concepts of multidisciplinarity,
interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity present different degrees of interaction between knowledge
and participants. In multidisciplinarity, different fi elds contribute to a given issue, maintaining, to
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a large extent, their own limits; in interdisciplinarity, there is greater articulation and integration
between perspectives; while transdisciplinarity presupposes even more comprehensive forms of
integration and overcoming disciplinary boundaries (Sell et al., 2022).
This differentiation becomes relevant for the organization of care because teams composed
of professionals from different categories can continue to reproduce isolated interventions.
Interdisciplinarity requires a distinct movement, marked by communication, shared construction of
objectives, recognition of professional competencies and integration of decisions. Sell et al. (2022) point
out that interdisciplinary work involves developing collaborative strategies for complex problems,
going beyond isolated disciplinary perspectives and seeking to integrate different knowledge around
shared frameworks and objectives.
In the fi eld of care, this debate is close to the concept of interprofessional collaboration. Akbar
et al. (2025), in a conceptual analysis of interprofessional collaboration in Primary Care, identifi ed
fi ve fundamental attributes for its implementation: communication, collaboration, teamwork, patient-
centered care, and leadership. These components demonstrate that collaboration involves much more
than the coexistence of professionals in the same space, as it presupposes systematic interaction,
information sharing, and participation of different team members in decisions related to care.
Communication occupies a particularly relevant position in this process, since it allows
sharing clinical information, understanding different professional perspectives and building continuity
between different interventions. In addition, relationships of trust, recognition of skills and clarity
regarding professional roles contribute to transforming the diversity of knowledge into collective
capacity to respond. Bosch and Mansell (2015) highlight that collaborative teams depend, among
other elements, on the clarity of roles, trust among its members, the ability to deal with differences,
and shared leadership.
Similar results were found by Drew et al. (2024) when investigating teamwork in hospital
care for people with hip fractures. The authors identifi ed as central elements the defi nition of roles
and responsibilities, effi cient information transfer processes, shared objectives, and collaborative
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leadership, and these components are supported by the notion of shared responsibility for care. These
fi ndings show that interdisciplinarity also depends on organizational conditions that enable workers
to discuss cases, share information and build decisions together.
Collaboration between professionals also has implications for care outcomes. In a systematic
review carried out in Primary Care, Bouton et al. (2023) found favorable results of interprofessional
interventions in different groups of patients, particularly among individuals at cardiovascular risk.
However, the authors also identifi ed heterogeneity of the results in some populations, indicating that
the simple adoption of interprofessional teams does not guarantee, in isolation, better outcomes; The
way in which collaboration is organized and effectively developed needs to be considered.
Thus, interdisciplinarity can be an important strategy to overcome the fragmentation of
practices and favor a more comprehensive care, but its implementation requires changes that cross
professional relationships, health education and the organization of services itself. Discussing these
conditions becomes especially relevant in the face of health systems in which comprehensiveness
demands permanent articulation between different knowledge, subjects and points of care.
Thus, this article aims to refl ect on interdisciplinarity in health as a foundation for
interprofessional collaboration and for the construction of comprehensive care, discussing its
potentialities and challenges related to communication, teamwork, leadership and co-responsibility
for care.
DEVELOPMENT
Interdisciplinarity in health has been progressively recognized as a necessary response to
the complexity of contemporary care problems. This need arises from the fact that the demands
presented by users are rarely limited to a single clinical or professional dimension. Chronic conditions,
multimorbidity, aging, mental suffering, rehabilitation processes and social vulnerabilities require
assessments and interventions that articulate different knowledge, preventing the user from being
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subjected to fragmented or poorly connected actions. Sell et al. (2022) highlight that complex
health problems can hardly be solved by a single discipline, requiring a combination of knowledge,
experiences, and perspectives from different fi elds.
However, recognizing the need for different professionals does not mean that the care
produced is necessarily interdisciplinary. This distinction is important because, in many services,
the multiprofessional organization continues to be structured based on parallel interventions. Each
worker performs his or her own evaluation, defi nes his/her own conducts and records specifi c
information, without these contributions being suffi ciently integrated into a common care plan. In
this confi guration, there is professional diversity, but fragmentation remains.
Sell et al. (2022) point out that multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity
present different forms of interaction. While multidisciplinarity allows different areas to contribute
while maintaining their disciplinary limits, interdisciplinarity presupposes greater integration,
synthesis and harmonization between knowledge. Transdisciplinarity, in turn, seeks to go even
broader beyond the traditional boundaries between fi elds of knowledge. Although these concepts
should not be understood as rigid or hierarchically superior stages, their differentiation allows us to
analyze more precisely how collective work is effectively organized.
Interdisciplinarity and overcoming the fragmentation of care
Fragmentation is one of the main tensions faced by health care. When care is organized
exclusively based on specialties, there is a risk that different professionals intervene on the same user
without suffi cient articulation between their actions. As a consequence, there may be overlapping of
conducts, care gaps, repetition of procedures and diffi culties in the continuity of follow-up.
Interdisciplinarity proposes a different logic by bringing specialized knowledge into
interaction. This does not imply eliminating professional identities, but recognizing that each
profession offers only one possible perspective on problems that are, in essence, multidimensional.
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Sell et al. (2022) emphasize that interdisciplinarity implies overcoming disciplinary boundaries to
develop collaborative ways of solving problems, incorporating and articulating knowledge from
different fi elds. For this to happen, it is necessary that the participants understand the contributions of
others, establish common references and be willing to negotiate interpretations and priorities.
From this perspective, comprehensiveness should not be confused with the simple offer of
several specialties. A user can be seen by many professionals and still experience fragmented care.
Comprehensiveness depends on the ability to connect these different interventions in a way that is
coherent with the needs of the person.
The contribution of interdisciplinarity lies precisely in this movement of integration. Instead
of a succession of isolated actions, it seeks to constitute a process in which different knowledges
participate in the analysis of the problem, the defi nition of priorities and the planning of interventions.
Thus, professional diversity is no longer just a characteristic of the team’s composition and becomes
a resource to broaden the understanding of health needs.
Interprofessional collaboration as a structuring element of care
Interprofessional collaboration can be understood as one of the main ways in which
interdisciplinarity is materialized in services. Akbar et al. (2025), when conceptually analyzing
interprofessional collaboration in Primary Care, identifi ed fi ve recurrent attributes: communication,
collaboration, teamwork, patient-centered care, and leadership. These components demonstrate that
collaboration is not limited to the division of tasks, but involves structured relationships between
professionals who share information, responsibilities and decisions.
Collaboration initially requires workers to recognize the interdependence between their
practices. The work of one professional often has consequences for the planning of others, especially
when the care involves people with multiple needs. In this sense, interdisciplinary work requires
that decisions cease to be built exclusively within each professional nucleus and, when necessary,
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incorporate the contribution of the different team members.
Akbar et al. (2025) highlight that collaboration favors the planning, implementation, and
joint evaluation of care. In addition, it enables learning among professionals, shared participation in
decisions and better use of the specifi c competencies existing in the group. Such a process can reduce
redundant interventions and favor greater coherence between the different actions developed.
This articulation also depends on the recognition that no profession alone has all the necessary
resources to respond to the complex needs of users. In effectively collaborative teams, professional
competencies are understood as complementary, not competing.
Bosch and Mansell (2015) use the analogy with sports teams to demonstrate that collective
performance does not depend only on the individual competence of each member. According to
the authors, clarity of roles, trust, the ability to face adversity, the management of differences, and
collective leadership are important elements for the functioning of collaborative teams. Applied to
the health context, this refl ection shows that highly qualifi ed professionals can produce limited results
when they are unable to integrate their actions.
Communication as the axis of interdisciplinary practice
Among the different elements of collaboration, communication appears as one of the most
consistent in the studies analyzed. Without adequate communication mechanisms, it becomes diffi cult
to establish common goals, recognize changes in the users’ situation, coordinate interventions, and
build continuity of care.
Akbar et al. (2025) consider communication to be a key attribute of interprofessional
collaboration. The transparent sharing of information, knowledge, and perspectives contributes to
building trust among team members and allows everyone to understand the user’s conditions and the
objectives of the care plan.
Interdisciplinary communication, however, cannot be reduced to the recording of information
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in medical records. Although documentation is indispensable, the dialogue between professionals also
involves clinical discussion, negotiation and joint interpretation of the available information. Team
meetings, case discussions, shared visits, and brief moments of alignment can play an important role
in this process.
Drew et al. (2024), when investigating teams responsible for the care of people with hip
fractures, observed that the effi cient transfer of information was an indispensable component of
teamwork. Professionals reported the use of multiprofessional meetings, clinical visits, shared
documentation, information systems and informal communications to ensure that relevant information
reached the appropriate people at the appropriate time.
These practices reveal that interdisciplinary communication needs to be organized. When the
circulation of information depends only on occasional encounters or personal relationships between
certain workers, the risk of discontinuity increases. Consequently, services need to create permanent
devices that favor information sharing.
Another relevant aspect is that communication does not take place in a neutral environment.
Professional hierarchies, power relations and unequal recognition between categories can limit the
participation of some members. Therefore, the effectiveness of the dialogue also depends on an
organizational culture in which different professionals can present opinions, question decisions and
participate in the construction of the care plan.
Clarity of roles, trust and co-responsibility
Interdisciplinarity requires a balance between the defi nition of responsibilities and fl exibility
for collective work. The absence of clarity can produce duplicity, omission of tasks and confl icts; On
the other hand, excessively rigid professional boundaries can hinder cooperation and continuity.
Drew et al. (2024) identifi ed the clear defi nition of roles and responsibilities as one of the core
components of successful multiprofessional work. Protocols, formalized care trajectories, training
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processes and description of professional responsibilities contributed to a greater understanding of
the role of each member.
This clarity, however, must be accompanied by mutual recognition. Bosch and Mansell
(2015) emphasize that each participant needs to realize the value of their own contribution and the
contribution of others. The team becomes more effective when professionals understand their roles,
but also accept some degree of overlap and cooperation when it better meets the needs of the user.
In this process, trust and mutual respect become indispensable. Akbar et al. (2025) point out
that teamwork is strengthened when the contributions of different professionals are valued and when
rigid hierarchical relationships give way to environments in which members feel recognized and
supported.
Trust also favors co-responsibility. Drew et al. (2024) found that, in addition to the four
structuring elements identifi ed in the functioning of the teams, clarity of roles, transfer of information,
shared objectives, and collaborative leadership, there was a transversal principle: shared responsibility
by the user.
This notion is particularly relevant because it shifts the team from a task-based logic to
a collective results-oriented logic. Each professional maintains their specifi c responsibilities, but
recognizes that care cannot be understood as a sum of disconnected individual responsibilities.
Collaborative leadership and organizational support
Another central aspect refers to leadership. Interdisciplinarity does not depend exclusively
on the goodwill of professionals. For collaboration to be maintained in a sustainable way, it needs
institutional conditions that favor participation, communication, negotiation and sharing of decisions.
Akbar et al. (2025) highlight that leaders who are able to support collaboration create
environments in which different disciplines can work in an integrated manner. Inclusive leadership
contributes to establishing clear goals, recognizing professional roles, and encouraging the participation
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of different members.
In this sense, leadership should not be confused only with formal authority. In interdisciplinary
teams, their role is also to facilitate processes, manage confl icts, and create conditions for different
perspectives to be considered.
Bosch and Mansell (2015) use the concept of collective leadership to defend the distribution
of responsibility among team members, rather than its absolute concentration on a single fi gure. This
form of leadership can increase involvement and favor greater commitment of participants to shared
goals.
Organizational support also appears as an important antecedent of collaboration. Akbar et
al. (2025) emphasize that institutional policies, clear procedures, defi nition of responsibilities, and
structures that favor the circulation of information contribute to the implementation of interprofessional
work.
This demonstrates that interdisciplinarity needs to be planned as part of the organization
of services. It is unreasonable to demand permanent collaboration in environments that do not offer
time for meetings, have high professional turnover, hinder shared access to information, or maintain
hierarchical structures that make it impossible for different categories to effectively participate.
Person-centered care and comprehensiveness
Interdisciplinarity only acquires meaning when its purpose remains linked to the needs of
the user. The risk of turning collaboration into a process focused solely on the internal workings of
the team needs to be avoided.
Akbar et al. (2025) identify patient-centered care as a fundamental attribute of interprofessional
collaboration. From this perspective, people’s needs, preferences and values should guide decisions
and care plans, with the active participation of users whenever possible.
Person-centered care reinforces the notion that different professionals should not simply
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present independent conducts. The care plan needs to make sense to the person who will receive the
care. This means considering not only clinical parameters, but also living conditions, possibilities of
adherence, personal priorities, family relationships, and social context.
Interdisciplinarity contributes to broadening this understanding because it allows different
professionals to bring different elements to the discussion. However, this diversity needs to
converge to a coherent plan. Otherwise, the user may continue to receive multiple and contradictory
recommendations.
In this scenario, the participation of the person in the decision-making process constitutes an
additional element of integrality. It is not enough to integrate professionals if the user remains only as
a passive recipient of the conducts. Interprofessional collaboration makes greater sense when it also
incorporates the person and, when relevant, his or her family in the construction of decisions.
Potential of collaboration for care outcomes
The available studies suggest that collaboration can have a positive impact on different care
outcomes, although these effects are not uniform in all contexts.
Bouton et al. (2023), in a systematic review on interprofessional collaboration in Primary
Care, analyzed 65 articles referring to 61 interventions. Among 28 studies involving people at
cardiovascular risk, 23 reported positive effects on patient-centered outcomes. Among studies related
to mental or physical symptoms, a high proportion of favorable outcomes was also observed. However,
among the elderly and people with multiple conditions, the fi ndings were less consistent.
These results are important because they show that collaboration has potential, but should
not be treated as an automatically effective intervention. The existence of different professionals does
not determine the outcome; It is necessary to understand how the teams are structured, what is the
degree of integration among the participants and what communication and coordination mechanisms
were used.
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Akbar et al. (2025) also identify positive consequences associated with interprofessional
collaboration, such as improved quality of care, greater user satisfaction, greater effi ciency in the
management of health conditions, and professional development. Integrated work can reduce
duplication of actions, improve the use of resources and expand learning opportunities among workers
themselves.
Therefore, the benefi ts of interdisciplinarity are not restricted to users. Collaboration can also
favor professional learning, exchange of experiences, and greater understanding of the competencies
of team members.
Challenges to transform interdisciplinarity into everyday practice
Despite the potential benefi ts, interdisciplinarity remains crossed by structural and relational
diffi culties. Sell et al. (2022) identify among the challenges of inter- and transdisciplinary work the
need for time, resources, adequate leadership, appropriate team composition, and overcoming confl icts
between disciplines and power inequalities.
Hierarchical relationships represent a particularly important challenge. When certain
professions are systematically recognized as decision-makers and others assume only an executing
position, interdisciplinary work tends to be limited. The formal participation of different categories
does not mean effective participation.
Another obstacle is in vocational training. During their educational trajectory, students are
often prepared within their own areas, with restricted contact with other courses and few opportunities
for shared learning. As a consequence, they can enter the job market knowing little about the skills
and responsibilities of other professions.
Bosch and Mansell (2015) point out that experiences of interprofessional education can favor
a more positive perception of teamwork and greater understanding of professional roles. Sell et al.
(2022) add that skills such as communication, fl exibility, openness to different perspectives, and
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leadership need to be developed in the training of workers.
Continuing education in services also plays an important role. It is not just about offering
specifi c training on collaboration, but also about creating opportunities for professionals to refl ect
on their own work processes, discuss care problems and review relationships established between
categories.
Thus, interdisciplinarity needs to be understood as a process under construction. It is not
consolidated by normative determination or by the simple meeting of professionals. It requires
organizational conditions, development of skills, change in power relations and permanent willingness
to negotiate.
By gathering the fi ndings of the analyzed studies, it is observed that communication,
leadership, clarity of roles, trust, shared objectives, user centrality and co-responsibility appear as
converging elements. These components indicate that interdisciplinarity is simultaneously a way of
organizing work and a way of producing relationships. Its strengthening can contribute to reducing the
fragmentation of care, as long as it is accompanied by concrete changes in the training, management
and daily life of health services.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
Interdisciplinarity is a relevant strategy to respond to the complexity of contemporary health
needs and face the fragmentation that still characterizes an important part of care practices. More
than bringing together professionals from different areas, its implementation presupposes integration
of knowledge, effective communication, recognition of specifi c competencies, defi nition of common
objectives and shared construction of decisions related to care.
The refl ection developed shows that interprofessional collaboration is a concrete expression
of this movement in the daily routine of services. The studies analyzed converge by pointing to
communication, clarity of roles, trust, collaborative leadership, shared goals, and co-responsibility
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as fundamental elements for the functioning of teams. In this process, preserving professional
specifi cities does not represent an obstacle to interdisciplinarity; on the contrary, it is precisely the
diversity of knowledge, when placed in dialogue, that expands the possibilities of understanding and
intervention in the face of the needs of users (Bosch; Mansell, 2015; Sell et al., 2022; Drew et al., 2024;
Akbar et al., 2025).
It is also observed that the effects of collaboration should not be understood automatically.
Although there is evidence of favorable results in different care contexts, particularly in Primary Care,
their effectiveness depends on the population served, the characteristics of the interventions and,
above all, the way collaborative work is structured and developed. The heterogeneous results identifi ed
by Bouton et al. (2023) reinforce the need to overcome the idea that the simple multiprofessional
composition is suffi cient to produce better outcomes.
In this sense, one of the main challenges is to transform interdisciplinarity from a principle
defended in institutional discourses into practice incorporated into the daily routine of services.
Barriers related to professional hierarchies, inequalities of power, insuffi cient time and resources,
weaknesses in communication, and absence of organizational support can limit collaboration.
Confronting it requires actions that reach both the relationships between workers and the processes of
management and organization of work (Sell et al., 2022).
The training of professionals also needs to participate in this movement. Developing skills
to dialogue, share decisions, recognize different perspectives and work collectively should not be an
expectation restricted to the moment of insertion in the services. Interprofessional education during
training and continuing education in daily work are, therefore, ways to strengthen a collaborative
culture and prepare professionals capable of acting in the face of problems whose complexity goes
beyond the limits of a single area of knowledge.
Finally, strengthening interdisciplinarity means shifting the organizing center of care from
professional boundaries to people’s needs. The integration of knowledge only achieves its purpose
when it contributes to the user being understood in his or her entirety and participating in decisions
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involving his or her health. Thus, more than an arrangement between different professional categories,
interdisciplinarity constitutes a possibility for reconstructing care relationships, making them more
articulated, shared and person-centered.
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