The Role Of Interprofessional Teams In Enhancing Quality Of Patient Care

Abstract

Interprofessional collaboration (IPC) has become a cornerstone strategy for enhancing quality, safety, and patient outcomes in healthcare in increasingly complex health systems. This narrative review summarizes currently available evidence regarding the role of interprofessional teams (involving physicians, nurses, pharmacists, social workers, therapists, and other health professionals) working together to improve the quality of patient care across a range of clinical settings. Through integrated analysis of peer-reviewed literature from 2015 to 2024, we show that effective interprofessional teamwork significantly reduced medical errors, decreasing hospital readmissions, medication safety, patient satisfaction, and resource utilization. Key mechanisms are shared decision-making, comprehensive care planning, effective communication in a timely manner, and optimization of roles using unique areas of expertise. Despite good evidence of benefits, there are still barriers to implementation, including hierarchical professional cultures, siloed education systems, reimbursement structures that favor individual, not team-based care, and poor health information technology interoperability. Successful implementation demands multifaceted approaches such as IPE during professional training and education, team-based care models with well-defined roles and communication protocols, leadership support, and policy changes that promote an incentive for collaborative practice. This literature review concludes that for the attainment of safe and effective patient-centered care in the current medical health care setting, interprofessional teamwork is not only an operative choice but rather a basic requirement. Future research needs to focus on the standardised measurement of how well IPC works, cost-benefit analyses, and on building viable implementation frameworks for the most-wished scale-up, to be used across resource-constrained environments.