Interprofessional professionalism as a motivating force in interprofessional collaboration

Professionalism has been recognized as an essential component of inter-professional collaboration (IPC), and hence this study aimed at exploring elements of inter-professional professionalism (IPP) affecting IPC among surgery teams. This qualitative study had been conducted from 2019 to 2021. Fifteen participants in surgery teams including surgeons, anesthesia nursing, and surgical technology nursing at hospitals of Shahid Sadoughi University were contributed to this study. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed through inductive content analysis, an approach introduced by Lundman and Graneheim. Data analysis process included the following: (i) Developing verbatim transcription of interview, (ii) Extracting semantic units and classifying them under the top compact unit, (iii) Summarizing and classifying the compact units and selecting appropriate labels for them, and (iv) Sorting subcategories according to their similarities and differences. Two hundreds and forty-two codes, five sub-categories, two categories, and a theme entitled "reciprocal accountability in IPP” were extracted. The barrier category was named “weakness in accountability to team-based values" and the facilitator category was called "responsibility of maintaining empathetic relationship within the IP team". Development of IPP and professional values (e.g., altruism, empathetic communication, and accountability to individual’s and team’s roles) can facilitate collaborative processes among different professions.