[Interprofessional collaboration in internal medicine : Developments between health professions in German language...

Healthcare is becoming increasingly more complex due to demographic change, chronic diseases, pandemics and heterogeneous living situations. Individual professional groups can hardly cope with these demands on their own. Internationally proven concepts of interprofessional collaboration in care, teaching and research show positive effects on processes, efficiency and outcomes.

This article provides an overview of publications on interprofessional concepts, structures and research approaches in internal medicine as a basis for further discussion and needs analysis.

Mixed-methods approach: two-stage modified Delphi method for term definition; bibliometric analysis of the journal Innere Medizin (Internal Medicine); qualitative exploration of publications from the last 5 years.

Over the last 5 years contributions on interprofessional care structures for complex cases have dominated, particularly for vulnerable and multimorbid patients (especially geriatrics, palliative medicine, oncology). Other topics include interprofessional exchange, nonpharmacological adjunctive treatment, digital and telemedicine applications; teaching and "team science" play a secondary role.

Achieving interprofessionally anchored standard care requires a genuine paradigm shift . This requires expansion to other subareas also in the German internal medicine literature, a greater emphasis on teaching and "team science", systematically taking legal and financial framework conditions into account and systematically addressing the issue at the national level in order to close gaps in evidence and derive viable implementation strategies.