Interdisciplinary Practice Best Practices: When to Rethink Your Approach (and What to Do Next)

If you work with learners who receive services from multiple providers, you know the reality. Coordinating care across disciplines sounds simple—until it isn’t. Goals conflict. Families get mixed messages. Meetings happen, but nothing changes.

This article is for BCBAs, clinical supervisors, clinic owners, and anyone trying to make interdisciplinary collaboration actually work.

Interdisciplinary practice best practices aren’t about forcing everyone onto the same page. They’re about building systems that protect learner dignity, clarify roles, and create communication routines that prevent drift. When those systems break down, you need to know how to spot the problem and what to do next.

This guide covers what interdisciplinary practice really means, how to recognize when your team is drifting, and a practical framework you can use in any setting. You’ll find communication routines, meeting structures, shared goal templates, and a 7-day reset plan you can start next week.

Everything here centers on one idea: collaboration should make life better for the learner and family, not more complicated.

Start Here: Dignity, Assent, and Family Partnership Come First

Before we talk about meetings, templates, or communication systems, we need to ground ourselves in what matters most. Effective interdisciplinary work starts with ethics, not efficiency. The learner’s dignity and the family’s partnership aren’t add-ons—they’re the foundation.

Assent is the learner’s ongoing willingness to participate. It differs from legal consent, which usually comes from a guardian. Assent means watching for signals that the learner is saying “yes” or “no” to what’s happening.

For learners with limited verbal communication, the team must define what “yes” and “no” look like for that specific person. Turning away, protesting, or disengaging can all signal assent withdrawal.

When interdisciplinary teams share data and coordinate care, part of their job is making sure the learner feels safe and engaged across settings. This includes teaching functional communication so the learner can ask for changes or say “no” in ways adults will honor.

Shared decision-making means families and clinicians act as equal partners. Families guide what’s meaningful and realistic in daily routines.

Research supports this approach. Family partnership improves generalization because goals match real life. It reduces caregiver stress and supports consistency across environments. Major pediatric care guidelines endorse shared decision-making as a best practice.

Collaboration shouldn’t pressure families into one model. Instead, the team asks: “What matters most for your day-to-day life right now?” and “What would make this plan doable on hard days?”

Quick Self-Check (2 Minutes)

Before your next team meeting, pause and ask yourself:

• Are we protecting the learner’s comfort and choice?
• Do caregivers understand the plan in plain language?
• Are we asking for buy-in, or demanding compliance?

These questions help you catch drift early. If you can’t answer “yes” to all three, it’s time to reset.

For more guidance on assent-based collaboration basics, explore our resources on building dignity-first teams. For a deeper dive into family-centered care in ABA, we have additional materials to support your practice.

Looking for a quick tool? Download the dignity-first collaboration checklist to keep these questions front and center.

What Interdisciplinary Practice Means (and How It Differs From Multidisciplinary)

These terms get used interchangeably, but they mean different things. Getting clear on definitions helps teams align expectations from the start.

Multidisciplinary means professionals work in parallel. Each person operates in their own lane with their own goals. There may be some communication, but integration is low. Think of it like a salad bowl—ingredients sit next to each other without blending.

Interdisciplinary means professionals integrate methods and perspectives to reach a common goal. The team shares plans, coordinates decisions, and communicates frequently. Think of it like a curry—flavors combine into something new.

The practical difference shows up in daily work.

In a multidisciplinary setup, the OT works on utensil grip, the SLP works on requesting, and the BCBA works on waiting. Each addresses their piece separately.

In an interdisciplinary setup, the team agrees that the shared outcome is “mealtime is calm and the learner can ask for breaks.” The OT, SLP, and BCBA align their methods and share measures. Everyone contributes to one integrated plan.

The risk of “parallel play” teams is real. When providers work in silos, you get duplicated services, mixed messages, and learners who experience inconsistent responses from the adults around them.

For a plain-language guide on interdisciplinary vs multidisciplinary approaches, see our comparison resource.

A Simple Way to Remember It

Multi = many plans. Inter = one shared plan with different parts.

Use this framing in your next team email so everyone starts with the same understanding.

When to Rethink Your Approach: Red Flags Your Team Is Drifting

Drift happens even on well-intentioned teams. Recognizing the warning signs early helps you intervene before small problems become big ones. Red flags often show up as communication breakdown, power imbalance, and goal misalignment—not open conflict.

Watch for these signals:

• Goals conflict (one plan increases demands while another targets regulation first)
• Families report getting mixed instructions from different providers
• Meetings happen, but decisions don’t stick
• There’s tension about “who owns” a goal or problem
• The learner’s stress signs increase when services overlap
• Documentation is unclear, missing, or not shared appropriately

Less obvious red flags include avoidance and ghosting. When team members miss check-ins or dodge messages, trust may be breaking down.

Strong hierarchy can stop people from speaking up, leading to uncorrected errors. “We know best” attitudes create silo mentality and fragmented work. Different standards of evidence can cause clashes when disciplines don’t value each other’s approaches.

Low psychological safety shows up when people stop asking questions or when meetings become gripe sessions without action. These patterns signal that the collaboration system needs repair—not just more effort from individuals.

Fast Triage: What to Change First

When you see multiple red flags, prioritize your response:

• Safety or dignity issue (assent withdrawal, distress, coercive practices): Pause and repair immediately
• Scope issue (unclear roles): Clarify who does what before making new goals
• Communication issue: Fix the routine rather than blaming individuals

For more detailed guidance on conflict repair steps for clinical teams, explore our resources on rebuilding team trust.

If you see two or more red flags, schedule a 30-minute reset meeting using the agenda template later in this article.

Core Best Practices Framework: 10 Team Principles You Can Use Anywhere

High-functioning interdisciplinary teams share common characteristics. Research on team collaboration highlights ten principles that appear across successful groups. These translate well into ABA settings when you keep the learner at the center.

1. Shared purpose. Start with a learner-centered and family-centered goal. Everyone should be able to state what success looks like in plain language.

1. Role clarity. Define who does what and why. Ambiguity creates conflict and gaps.

1. Respect for each discipline’s expertise. No “one true model” thinking. Each profession brings valuable knowledge.

1. Shared language. Define key words the same way across the team to reduce misunderstanding.

1. Clear decisions. Establish who decides what and how you document it.

1. Closed-loop communication. Send, confirm, follow up. Messages aren’t complete until they’re acknowledged and acted on.

1. Plan for real life. Account for time, staffing, settings, and caregiver capacity when designing interventions.

1. Data that supports decisions. Keep data simple and meaningful, not performative.

1. Repair is normal. Build in how the team fixes missteps rather than pretending problems don’t happen.

1. Privacy and consent in coordination. Share only what’s needed, with permission.

These principles work across clinic, school, healthcare, and workplace settings. The key is translating them into specific routines your team can follow.

For more on shared goal systems across disciplines, explore our framework resources.

Do/Don’t: A Quick Tone Check

• Do ask: “What does success look like for this learner?”
• Don’t ask: “How do we get everyone to follow the ABA plan?”

The first question invites collaboration. The second signals hierarchy that undermines partnership.

Print these 10 principles and keep them in your supervision binder as your team standard.

Communication Routines That Prevent Drift

“Communicate better” is vague advice. Teams need specific routines they can follow consistently. Two concepts make the biggest difference: shared language and closed-loop communication.

Shared language means using the same words to mean the same things. Jargon causes problems when each discipline uses similar terms differently.

Build a shared glossary early in the collaboration. Define words like:

• Behavior function: what the learner gets or avoids
• Sensory support: what the body needs to feel regulated
• Prompt: help given to succeed
• Break: planned pause
• Assent withdrawal: signals the learner is saying no

Keep the list simple and review it together. Visual tools like diagrams or flowcharts can create a shared mental model that helps everyone stay aligned.

Closed-loop communication is a three-step process:

1. The sender states a message to a specific person
2. The receiver repeats back what they heard
3. The sender confirms the message was understood correctly

This sounds formal, but it prevents the handoff errors that cause real problems.

Here’s what it sounds like in practice:

• Sender: “Jordan, please update the parent today that we’re pausing escape extinction and switching to choice-based demands.”
• Receiver: “Got it. I’ll tell the parent we’re pausing escape extinction and switching to choice-based demands today.”
• Sender: “Correct. Please document it in the shared note by 3pm.”

Set a team rule about where updates live. Choose one shared place and decide who posts them. Use short, predictable formats that include what changed, why it changed, and what you need from others. Plan communication specifically for high-stress moments like incidents, medication changes, or school transitions.

For a handoff note template for teams, check our downloadable resources.

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Use the closed-loop template for your next handoff note. It cuts down back-and-forth and ensures nothing gets lost.

Roles, Responsibilities, and Scope: How to Avoid Stepping on Each Other

Role confusion causes duplicated services, missed needs, and team conflict.

Scope of practice means what a professional is trained and legally allowed to do based on their license or credential. Understanding scope helps teams divide work appropriately and avoid stepping on each other’s expertise.

A role map clarifies who leads which goal area, who supports, and who consults. The most common framework uses four categories:

• Lead: responsible for execution and completion
• Support: assists with the work
• Consult: gives input before action is taken
• Informed: receives updates but isn’t directly involved

Best practice suggests having one lead per task. Review the role map regularly. Avoid having too many people in the consult role, which can slow decisions. Keep the learner and caregiver experience as the deciding factor when questions arise about who should do what.

There’s a difference between sharing ideas and directing another discipline’s work. Collaboration means contributing your expertise while respecting that other professionals make decisions within their scope.

Create a simple “when to refer out” guideline with clear triggers that help everyone recognize when a need falls outside their area.

For a role clarity matrix you can adapt, explore our template library.

Role Clarity Table

Consider creating a table for each learner with these columns:

• Goal area
• Shared outcome link
• Lead (one person)
• Support
• Consult
• Informed
• Where documented
• Review date

This makes expectations visible and easy to update.

Build a one-page role map for each learner and review it every quarter.

Team Meeting Structure: Agendas, Facilitation, and Decision-Making That Actually Works

Meetings should lead to decisions, follow-through, and less frustration. Too often, teams talk without deciding anything. A repeatable structure fixes this.

Set clear meeting goals before you begin. You’re there to decide, align, assign, and document.

Use a consistent agenda that includes:

• Wins
• Concerns
• Quick data snapshot
• Decisions needed today
• Next steps with owners and due dates

Make space for caregiver voice and learner needs. Don’t leave these for the end when people are rushed.

Assign roles in every meeting:

• Someone facilitates and keeps discussion on track
• Someone keeps time
• Someone takes notes and records decisions

These roles can rotate, but they should always be filled.

Establish a decision rule for disagreement. If the team can’t reach consensus, return to safety and dignity first, then the shared outcome, then scope. When necessary, agree to run a time-limited test with a review date rather than debating indefinitely.

Document the decision, who disagreed, and how you’ll evaluate the outcome.

Send the agenda 24 hours ahead. Follow the 40/20/40 guideline: 40% preparation, 20% meeting, 40% follow-up. End every meeting with a closed-loop recap—someone summarizes decisions and owners out loud.

For an interdisciplinary meeting agenda template, see our downloadable resources.

30-Minute Reset Meeting Agenda

When your team is drifting, this focused agenda gets things back on track:

• Shared goal statement in plain language (2 min)
• What’s not working—one example from each person (8 min)
• Role and scope check (5 min)
• Choose one change to try this week (5 min)
• Define how you’ll know it helped (5 min)
• Confirm next check-in date (2 min)

Copy this reset agenda into your next meeting invite and run it exactly as written.

Shared Goal Setting and Shared Outcomes: How Teams Align on Priorities

A shared outcomes statement unifies the team toward a client-centered goal and reduces conflict from competing priorities. Without it, each discipline optimizes for their own targets while the learner experiences fragmented care.

Start with a shared outcome in plain language—what life looks like when things improve. This isn’t a clinical objective. It’s a description families can recognize and care about.

Then turn that outcome into a small set of shared priorities (no more than two to four). Each discipline maps their contributions to those priorities. One map, many contributions.

When setting shared goals:

• Make sure goals protect dignity and don’t rely on coercion
• Plan for generalization by identifying where skills should show up across settings
• Pick outcomes the family cares about and can notice
• Include shared decision-making so families help define what matters

For a shared goal map template, explore our planning resources.

Shared Goal Map Fill-In

Create a map that includes:

• Outcome in plain language
• Barriers (what gets in the way)
• Supports (what helps)
• Each discipline’s contribution (short bullets)
• How you’ll track progress (simple measure)
• Review date

Use the shared goal map before you write new goals in any one discipline.

Common Barriers and Fixes: Conflict, Territory, Time, and Competing Models

Every interdisciplinary team faces barriers. Normalizing them helps you address them without blame.

Different models and language: Define terms together and agree on shared outcomes rather than arguing about whose approach is right.

Territory and defensiveness: Return to the learner goals and the role map. Clarify what each person contributes and why it matters.

Time constraints: Use shorter meetings, clearer notes, and fewer priorities. You can’t do everything—choose what matters most.

Unclear decision rights: Establish a decision rule and document who decides what.

Caregiver overload: Create one combined home plan with one set of priorities.

Mistrust from past experiences: Practice transparency, follow through on commitments, and use repair steps when things go wrong.

For more on common collaboration barriers and fixes, explore our troubleshooting resources.

Repair Loop: What to Do When Things Get Tense

When conflict arises:

1. Name the problem without blame
2. Restate the shared goal
3. Clarify roles and constraints
4. Choose one small test change
5. Set a short follow-up to evaluate

Pick one barrier from this list and run the repair loop this week.

Practical Tools and Templates

Templates help teams implement best practices consistently. Here are the core tools that support interdisciplinary work:

• Role clarity table: Defines who leads, supports, and consults for each goal area. Document in one place and review regularly.

• Shared goal map: Links outcomes to priorities to discipline contributions to measures. Keeps everyone focused on the same destination.

• Meeting agenda with minutes: Includes decisions, owners, and due dates. Transforms meetings from discussions into action.

• Closed-loop handoff note: Includes what changed, why, what to do now, who’s responsible, what to watch for, and a request to confirm receipt.

• Privacy and consent checklist: Reminds teams to share only what’s needed, with permission, through approved channels.

Under HIPAA, healthcare providers can generally share protected health information with school health staff for treatment purposes. FERPA is stricter and usually requires written consent before schools share records with outside providers. Use a joint release of information form that meets both requirements when working across settings.

For a complete interdisciplinary template pack, check our resource library. For guidance on privacy basics for care coordination, we have additional materials available.

Privacy and Consent Reminder

Before sharing information, ask:

• Do we have a signed release that covers who, what, and how we share?
• Are we under HIPAA, FERPA, or both?
• Are we sharing the minimum necessary?
• Are we using approved channels?
• Did we avoid client identifiers in casual tools like slides or non-secure apps?

Want these templates in one bundle? Grab the printable-style template pack and use it for every new learner.

Examples in Real Settings

The same framework applies across healthcare, education, and workplace settings. What changes is the specific context and team members.

Healthcare Coordination

When coordinating with medical providers, use clear and compassionate language. Shared decision-making keeps everyone aligned. Communication failures are a major cause of serious medical errors, so structure matters.

If medication affects sleep or appetite and you notice behavior changes, send a short update to the medical team. Describe your current function hypothesis, what changed in behavior, and what you’re trying. Request medical input. Keep it focused and plain language.

Tools like Ask-Tell-Ask can help structure these conversations.

For more on communicating with medical providers, explore our resources.

School and IEP Collaboration

In school settings, BCBAs often work alongside SLPs and OTs to support learners. A shared interprofessional goal keeps everyone aligned.

For example, if a student needs support for mealtime participation and communication, the OT might address seating and sensory-motor readiness, the SLP might set AAC targets, and the BCBA might embed those targets through functional communication training with consistent adult responses.

Unified data and consultative service models help. Use alignment language like “How do you usually approach this?” to respect existing expertise.

For an IEP collaboration guide for BCBAs, see our school-based resources.

Workplace and Adult Learner Support

Adult support plans also benefit from explicit role mapping and shared goals. Respect adult learning principles: autonomy, prior experience, and action-oriented learning. Add flexible check-ins and interprofessional education when possible.

Choose the example closest to your setting and adapt the workflow.

A 7-Day Reset Plan: What to Do Next Week

You don’t need to overhaul everything at once. This 7-day plan helps you make meaningful progress without burning out your team.

Day 1: Build a role matrix for your top two shared priorities. Define who leads, supports, and consults for each.

Day 2: Agree on shared language. Define key terms like assent signals, break, prompt, and behavior plan steps. Write them down where everyone can see them.

Day 3: Add a 10-minute weekly huddle. Keep it time-limited and focused on planning forward, not rehashing problems.

Day 4: Add one psychological safety norm. Make it explicit that questions are allowed. Establish one escalation path for concerns.

Day 5: Put family goals in the plan in plain language. Confirm that shared decision-making happened and the family agrees with priorities.

Day 6: Build a handoff note routine. Require closed-loop confirmation so nothing gets lost.

Day 7: Review two measures. Ask what changed and decide whether to keep or adjust your approach.

For supervision activities for collaboration skills, explore our professional development resources.

Keep It Small

• Focus on one learner at a time
• Make one change at a time
• Put one follow-up date on the calendar

Sustainable improvement comes from consistent small steps, not dramatic overhauls.

Use this 7-day plan as your supervision activity for the week.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are interdisciplinary practice best practices?

Best practices are repeatable team habits that protect dignity and improve coordination. Core areas include shared goals, role clarity, communication routines, meeting structure, and repair steps. The specific practices should fit your setting and the family’s needs.

What is the difference between an interdisciplinary team and a multidisciplinary team?

Multidisciplinary teams work in parallel with separate plans. Interdisciplinary teams share one plan with coordinated decisions. A multidisciplinary approach might have each therapist working on different goals independently. An interdisciplinary approach has all therapists contributing to the same shared outcome.

How do you set shared goals across ABA, speech, OT, and school teams?

Start with a shared outcome in plain language. Choose two to four priorities. Map each discipline’s contributions. Pick simple measures and review dates. Keep the family involved in defining what matters.

What communication routines help interdisciplinary teams stay aligned?

Shared language means defining key terms the same way. Closed-loop communication means confirming messages were received and understood. Use one place for updates and a consistent format for sharing what changed and what you need from others.

How do you handle conflict on an interdisciplinary team without taking over?

Name the shared goal and return to learner dignity. Clarify roles and constraints. Use a repair loop with one small test change. Schedule a short follow-up to evaluate the result.

What should be included in an interdisciplinary team meeting agenda?

Include wins, concerns, and a quick data snapshot. Identify decisions needed today. Assign owners and due dates. Make space for caregiver voice and a learner dignity check.

Are there interdisciplinary practice best practices resources or templates?

Yes. Printable-style templates include meeting agendas, role maps, shared goal maps, and handoff notes. Use them weekly to maintain consistency. Remember to follow your setting’s privacy rules when sharing information.

Putting It All Together

Strong interdisciplinary practice is built on ethics, clarity, and repeatable routines. It’s not about getting everyone to agree on everything. It’s about creating systems where dignity comes first, roles are clear, communication loops close, and teams know how to repair when things drift.

The learner and family experience the consequences of how well we collaborate. Mixed messages and conflicting goals create stress. Aligned teams create stability and better outcomes.

Start with one learner. Run one reset meeting. Use one shared goal map. Build from there.

If you want the full template pack to make this your team standard, download it and begin this week. The work of collaboration is ongoing, but every improvement matters.