Teamwork and Collaborative Leadership Lesson

Each type of provider plays a different, yet complementary, role in the interprofessional care team. Different members of the team may be present depending on the hospital size, region, resources, and perinatal care level. For care providers, the goal of the team is to provide safe, skilled, satisfying, continuous, and comprehensive care to birth parent and newborn baby. Each member of that team plays a vital role in meeting all of these care requirements.

Midwives, physicians, nurses, and other team members may possess different and overlapping scopes of practice and philosophies of care. When care providers collaborate effectively, they understand what tasks and situations their colleagues have the capacity to perform and manage. This also requires each person to be aware of their own competencies and qualities that contribute to better teamwork.

Primary providers (family physicians, midwives, and obstetricians)

Perinatal specialist providers (neonatologists, maternal fetal medicine specialists)

Collaborating providers for labor and birth (labor and delivery nurse, anesthesiologist, Emergency Medical Services, social worker, doula)

Collaborating providers for pregnancy and postpartum (lactation consultant, nutritionist, genetic counselor, public health nurse)