Nursing’s Distinct Contribution to Effective Interprofessional Collaboration

Editor’s Note 

Throughout October, INKA is exploring the importance of collaboration in advancing nursing knowledge and strengthening patient care. In this article, Dr. Camila Takao Lopes, Director of the Classification Development Committee, examines how nursing’s distinct knowledge, professional judgment, and autonomy contribute to meaningful interprofessional collaboration. 

Nursing Autonomy and its Distinct Contribution to Interprofessional Care 

Effective interprofessional collaboration involves more than healthcare professionals working together. It requires recognizing the distinct knowledge, professional judgments, and responsibilities that each profession contributes to patient care. For nursing, this means being able to exercise professional autonomy, communicate nursing judgments, and contribute meaningfully to shared decisions. 

A person preparing to leave the hospital following treatment for heart failure may be clinically stable but still struggle with medication routines, symptom recognition, or daily activities. Their caregiver may also feel unprepared for the responsibilities ahead. Understanding these concerns and deciding how to address them requires professional judgment from several members of the healthcare team. Nursing brings its own knowledge and perspective to these decisions. 

The World Health Professions Alliance (2025) emphasizes that effective interprofessional collaboration requires mutual respect for each profession’s distinct body of knowledge, role, and responsibilities, with complementary expertise brought together to meet the needs of individuals, families, and communities. For nurses, meaningful participation requires opportunities to exercise autonomy, communicate nursing judgments, and influence the shared plan of care. 

Nursing’s Distinct Knowledge and Professional Judgment

Nursing autonomy involves assessing needs, making professional judgments, initiating appropriate interventions, and evaluating outcomes within the nurse’s scope of practice. It also requires accountability for those decisions. In an interprofessional team, nurses use this autonomy to explain their assessments, propose actions, and raise concerns when a plan does not adequately address the person’s needs. 

Autonomy does not mean working in isolation. Rather, it enables nurses to exercise their professional responsibilities while contributing their expertise to shared decisions about patient care. 

The International Council of Nurses (2026) describes nursing practice as grounded in disciplinary knowledge, technical capability, ethical standards, and therapeutic relationships. These foundations inform a distinctive contribution: understanding how people respond to health conditions, experience treatment, and manage its consequences in everyday life. Nursing assessments bring together physiological findings, functional abilities, emotional responses, relationships, and the circumstances in which care takes place. 

In the example of a person with heart failure being discharged from the hospital, a nurse might identify that the patient cannot explain which symptoms require help, and/or that the caregiver is uncertain about managing care at home. Upon identifying other data and interpreting them, the nurse establishes priorities, proposes interventions, and determines how the outcomes will be assessed. Nursing diagnoses can make these judgments explicit and help communicate their implications to the wider team. 

Nursing diagnoses express clinical judgments about people’s responses to health conditions or life processes. They help identify needs that nursing care can address and provide a basis for selecting appropriate interventions. In this example, nursing diagnoses can help communicate concerns about health self-management and support needs, rather than leaving them as isolated observations. 

Collaboration within the interdisciplinary team will depend on making this professional reasoning visible and communicating how it should influence care. A discussion about discharge readiness, for example, should consider the nursing assessment of health self-management abilities and support needs alongside other clinical assessments. 

Bringing Distinct Professional Expertise Together 

For nursing judgments to contribute meaningfully to shared decisions, healthcare professionals need to recognize one another’s expertise, communicate effectively, and understand their respective responsibilities. 

The Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) was established in 2009 by six U.S. professional education associations representing nursing, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, osteopathic medicine, and public health. It develops competencies to help prepare healthcare professionals for collaborative practice. 

Its Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice, endorsed by 22 professional associations in 2023, identify four competency areas: values and ethics, roles and responsibilities, communication, and teams and teamwork (Interprofessional Education Collaborative, 2023). 

Its competencies emphasize maintaining expertise in one’s own profession, recognizing the contributions of other professionals, and clarifying responsibilities. They also support shared leadership and team decision-making. 

Together, these competencies help explain how distinct professional expertise contributes to effective collaboration; Mutual respect allows different professional judgments to be valued, clarity about roles helps team members understand one another’s contributions, and effective communication enables those judgments to inform shared decisions. 

Leadership can vary with the issue being addressed. For example, when planning discharge for a patient with heart failure, a nurse may lead discussions about the patient’s ability to recognize symptoms and manage care at home. A pharmacist may guide medication-related decisions, while a physiotherapist may contribute expertise on mobility and physical functioning. Each brings a distinct perspective to decisions made around the patient’s needs and priorities. 

What Does the Evidence Tell Us? 

Research examining interprofessional collaboration also provides insight into its relationship with patient outcomes and the conditions that support effective teamwork. 

A systematic review by Bouton et al. (2023) examined interprofessional collaboration in primary care and reported favorable patient outcomes in many studies, particularly those involving people with cardiovascular risk. Because results varied across populations and outcomes, teams are encouraged to consider how collaboration is organized and whether each profession’s expertise is being used effectively. 

Efforts to strengthen collaboration should also consider the nursing workforce’s capacity to contribute its knowledge. In a study involving more than 1.3 million surgical patients, Kang et al. (2020) found that better nurse–physician teamwork was associated with lower odds of 30-day mortality and failure to rescue. 

Failure to rescue refers to death following a serious complication, making it an important measure in evaluating patient safety and the effectiveness of care. 

Importantly, outcomes were more favorable when stronger teamwork was accompanied by better nurse staffing and nursing education. 

These findings highlight the importance of considering not only how healthcare professionals collaborate, but also whether nurses have the staffing and preparation needed to contribute their professional knowledge effectively. 

Recognizing Nursing’s Contribution to Collaborative Care 

Effective interprofessional collaboration depends on bringing together the distinct knowledge and professional judgments of those involved in patient care. Nursing contributes its own disciplinary perspective, assessments, and clinical reasoning, while nursing autonomy enables nurses to exercise that judgment and participate meaningfully in shared decisions. 

When these contributions are recognized and incorporated alongside the expertise of other healthcare professionals, collaboration can support a more comprehensive understanding of patient needs and a shared approach to care. 

References 

Bouton, C., Journeaux, M., Jourdain, M., Angibaud, M., Huon, J.-F., & Rat, C. (2023). Interprofessional collaboration in primary care: What effect on patient health? A systematic literature review. BMC Primary Care, 24, Article 253. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12875-023-02189-0 

Interprofessional Education Collaborative. (2023). IPEC core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice: Version 3. https://www.ipecollaborative.org/assets/core-competencies/IPEC_Core_Competencies_Version_3_2023.pdf 

International Council of Nurses. (2026). Current nursing definitions. https://icn.ch/resources/nursing-definitions/current-nursing-definitions 

Kang, X. L., Brom, H. M., Lasater, K. B., & McHugh, M. D. (2020). The association of nurse–physician teamwork and mortality in surgical patients. Western Journal of Nursing Research, 42(4), 245–253. https://doi.org/10.1177/0193945919856338 

World Health Professions Alliance. (2025, May). Policy statement: Interprofessional collaborative practice. https://whpa.org/sites/default/files/2025-12/WHPA%20Statement%20Interprof%20Collab%20Practice%202025%20logos.pdf 

About the Author 

Dr. Takáo Lopes, RN, PhD, is Director of the Classification Development Committee (CDC, formerly DDC) for the International Nursing Knowledge Association (INKA) and an Adjunct Professor at the Escola Paulista de Enfermagem, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Brazil. A NANDA-I Fellow and co-editor of NANDA International Nursing Diagnoses: Definitions and Classification since 2021, she is an internationally recognized scholar and speaker on nursing classifications and clinical reasoning.