Interprofessional collaboration in fluid teams: an ethnographic study in a Dutch healthcare context

In caring for clients with combined problems, various professionals are encouraged to work together in new ways. Collaboration is often fluid, and professionals are expected to seek other professionals and organizations to solve complex problems. This type of collaboration is not institutionalized; it may therefore be hard to develop routines compared to fixed teams. Knowledge about how frontline professionals work together in non-institutionalized forms of fluid collaboration is lacking. This article addresses this gap by studying how professionals from various disciplines work together in fluid collaborative contexts when caring for clients with combined problems. To this end, this empirical research has an iterative design and uses ethnographic fieldwork in studying these hard-to-grasp contexts. In the analysis, we explore whether and how interprofessional collaboration manifests in fluid teams in general practice, mental healthcare and social welfare a Dutch city and how team fluidity plays a role.