health-related work, such as diagnosis, treatment, surveillance, health communications and management.” Health professionals in collaborative practice are referred to as a collaborative practice-ready workforce, which is comprised of healthcare professionals “who have learned how to work in an inter-professional team and are competent to do so” (WHO 2010).
2.2.1 Competencies Although the number of competency domains of collaborative practice vary according to the setting, there is a striking convergence in terms of their content in the global literature. For example, the Inter-Professional Education Collaborative Expert Panel, a group composed of leaders from six health professions’ national organizations, has identified four inter-professional collaboration competency domains, such as: (i) Values/ ethics for inter-professional practice; (ii) Roles and responsibilities; (iii) Inter-professional communication; and (iv) Teams and teamwork. (IEC 2011). The key competencies identified by the expert panel do not address the unique aspect of each health profession or the common clinical and public health knowledge base that health professionals share. However, they do provide a broad framework that each health profession can adapt to its own circumstances. Similarly, Bronstein (2003) identifies five core components of inter-professional collaboration: (i) Interdependence; (ii) Newly created professional activities: (iii) Flexibility; (iv) Collective ownership of goals and (v) Reflection on process.
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Interdependence refers to reliance on interactions among professionals, whereby each is dependent on the other to accomplish his or her goals and tasks. To be interdependent, professionals must have a clear understanding of the distinction between their own and their collaborating professionals’ roles and responsibilities. Interdependence relates to integrative teamwork, when team members’ ability to carry out their work is dependent on each other. The reliance on others for certain tasks and resources allows collaborators to spend their time doing what each knows and does best. Newly created professional activities are a critical component of collaborative practice, as they maximize the expertise of each collaborator when they create unique purposes that do not replicate those of individual professionals or professional groups. Flexibility refers to the process of adaptability that successful collaborators exhibit under changing conditions. To have integrative collaborative teams, some deliberate roleblurring and flexibility are required within the legal medical act framework. The roles taken within a team should not necessarily depend on a professional’s training, but on the needs of the patient, situation, organization and colleagues. Flexibility in roles also demands fewer hierarchical relationships. The multidisciplinary literature on collaboration identifies collective ownership of goals as a core component for successful collaboration. Successful collaborative efforts include clearly defined realistic goals; a shared mission and vision, objectives and strategy; broadbased involvement in decision-making; and collaborators with the ability to compromise (Hall 2005).
