“Teaming is a necessity and an opportunity . . . health is complex. When you think of a whole person and their whole health, a person is a physical being, emotional, mental, spiritual being – that’s a lot to take care of and it can’t be done by one person. It needs a team, a team approach. There’s just too much for one of us to do. And then when you factor in the context that a person comes from their previous experience with health care, their supports that are available to them or not available, the resources that they can access or have difficulty accessing and their home environment . . . [teaming] is an opportunity to give your best alongside your colleagues…value and respect people whose approach is different than yours and see the benefit of what you’re doing together, which is often so much better than what you could accomplish individually.”
Jodene Neufeld, occupational therapist
Now that you have completed this e-book, as per the original goal, you should be able to describe the six competency domains of the CIHC Competency Framework for Advancing Collaboration (2024) essential for collaborative team-based care and services. Collaborative team-based care is an expectation of all health and social care providers. The advancement of collaboration requires attention to the six competencies as follows (CIHC, 2024):
- Relationship-focused care and services
- Team communication
- Role clarification and negotiation
- Team functioning
- Team differences and disagreement processing
- Collaborative leadership
How collaboration manifests itself will differ according to the context of practice (e.g., community, primary or acute care; co-location or virtual; patient/client/family/community engagement) and individual scope of practice, competency and capability.
“By having interprofessional collaboration and teamwork, it allows everyone to problem solve together and everybody contributes in their own way with their own knowledge and skills and experiences. And in doing that, we’re able to provide better patient care, decreased risk, improved safety, and as well, make the work more satisfying when you work as a team.”
Lanette Siragusa, nurse
Next Steps
This e-book was launched in the fall of 2025 and we welcome your feedback for future improvements. Please click on the link below for a brief survey. Participation is completely optional. All responses are anonymous and are not linked to this resource.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/OER_IPC_2025
