The goal of interprofessional education and practice is to support collaboration between disciplines to improve service delivery and outcomes for clients (Hammick et al. 2007). A barrier to interprofessional collaboration has been described as a collaboration blind spot (Kwan 2019). A collaboration blind spot occurs when groups feel threatened and forced into a collaboration that involves sharing information, sacrificing autonomy, and even what may feel like training someone else to do your job. The Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC 2023) has worked with speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and other health professions to highlight core competencies to support interprofessional collaboration. While these competencies are helpful and cover key areas that are needed for successful collaboration, a defensive posture among professionals has been building.

The purpose of this forum, Interprofessional Collaboration: A Guide for What's Working to Support Coordination of Care, is to provide a roadmap of sorts to help SLPs and other professionals potentially identify their own blind spots and barriers, learn more about interprofessional collaboration, and identify different ways in which collaboration can support care coordination for the clients we serve.

The first article is a look at a cascading coaching approach in a summer camp environment where student clinicians in speech-language pathology and special education worked collaboratively with parents of young children with autism to increase their elicitation and response techniques. A multiple baseline design across participants was implemented and student clinicians were effectively coached and subsequently provided effective coaching for parents with all participants showing gains in both elicitation and response techniques with large effect sizes.

The second article is a unique proposal identifying a framework for collaboration during assessment of augmentative and alternative communication. The proposed framework includes an examination of social–ecological factors that can be used to inform assessment and intervention decisions. The article provides a rationale and highlights strengths from collaborative partners via an applied model of interprofessional assessment.

The third article is a survey of practitioners from various disciplines using the Collaborative Practice Assessment Tool (CPAT) to identify what is working with regard to interprofessional collaboration and where areas for growth exist. This article systematically evaluated how responses to the CPAT mapped on to the IPEC competencies. It was evident that both SLPs and behavior analytic practitioners were more alike than they were different with similar strengths and areas of need when it comes to collaboration.

Thank you for taking the time to engage with the articles in this forum. I hope that you find the articles helpful to learn more about interprofessional collaboration in general, and I would encourage you to think about your own collaboration blind spots to determine how they might be impacting your interprofessional journey. Successful collaborations can positively impact our practice, our profession, and the patients we serve.

Article published online:
01 July 2024

© 2024. Thieme. All rights reserved.

Thieme Medical Publishers, Inc.
333 Seventh Avenue, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10001, USA