RESEARCH Open Access Ten principles of good interdisciplinary team work Susan A Nancarrow 1* , Andrew Booth 2 , Steven Ariss 2 , Tony Smith 3 , Pam Enderby 2 and Alison Roots 4 Abstract Background: Interdisciplinary team work is increasingly prevalent, supported by policies and practices that bring care closer to the patient and challenge traditional professional boundaries. To date, there has been a great deal of emphasis on the processes of team work, and in some cases, outcomes. Method: This study draws on two sources of knowledge to identify the attributes of a good interdisciplinary team; a published systematic review of the literature on interdisciplinary team work, and the perceptions of over 253 staff from 11 community rehabilitation and intermediate care teams in the UK. These data sources were merged using qualitative content analysis to arrive at a framework that identifies characteristics and proposes ten competencies that support effective interdisciplinary team work. Results: Ten characteristics underpinning effective interdisciplinary team work were identified: positive leadership and management attributes; communication strategies and structures; personal rewards, training and development; appropriate resources and procedures; appropriate skill mix; supportive team climate; individual characteristics that support interdisciplinary team work; clarity of vision; quality and outcomes of care; and respecting and understanding roles. Conclusions: We propose competency statements that an effective interdisciplinary team functioning at a high level should demonstrate. Keywords: Interdisciplinary team work, Competencies, Intermediate care, Transitional care, Allied health, Systematic review, Evidence synthesis, Qualitative research Background Interdisciplinary team work is a complex process in which different types of staff work together to share ex- pertise, knowledge, and skills to impact on patient care. Despite increasing emphasis on interdisciplinary team work over the past decade, in particular the growth of interdisciplinary education [1], there is little evidence as to the most effective way of delivering interdisciplinary team work [2]. This difficulty is compounded by the multifactorial nature of team work, which comprises the skill mix, setting of care, service organisation, individual relationships and management structures. Most existing research explores the impact of one or a few of these aspects, rather than examining the relation- ships among several of these components on a range of staff and patient outcomes. Similarly, interventions designed to improve interdisciplinary team work tend to focus on specifics of team work activities such as: shar- ing of patient files [3], case-conferencing approaches [4,5], or meeting style or frequency [6-10]. To date, there is not a systematic framework around which these activities, or characteristics, of interdisciplinary working can be structured. Terminology A wide range of terms are used to describe collaborative working arrangements between professionals [11]. Terms such as interdisciplinary, interprofessional, multiprofessional, and multidisciplinary are often used interchangeably in the literature to refer to both different types of teams and differ- ent processes within them [12]. They are also often used in conjunction with the term team work. However, there are some consistent distinctions that are useful to understand. The terms inter/multi-professional are generally narrower than the terms inter/multi-disciplinary [13-16] and refer to * Correspondence: susan.nancarrow@scu.edu.au 1 Southern Cross University, Military Road, East Lismore 2480, Australia Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © 2013 Nancarrow et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Nancarrow et al. Human Resources for Health 2013, 11:19 http://www.human-resources-health.com/content/11/1/19