Beyond silos: transdisciplinary collaboration for allied health clinicians providing stroke primary care

Integrating healthcare through team collaboration has many benefits, including more efficient, cost-effective services and improved client outcomes. However, in primary care, allied health professionals treating people with stroke often work in parallel, discipline-specific silos, which limits communication and leads to fragmented and/or duplicated care. Strengthening patient care after stroke requires moving beyond multidisciplinary collaboration toward transdisciplinary collaboration. Transdisciplinary collaboration is a form of skill-sharing, where one professional completes additional competency training to safely work beyond their usual scope of practice. In this perspectives paper, we present the view that transdisciplinary allied health collaboration has a role in primary care, using stroke as our case example. We explore the potential benefits and feasibility of transdisciplinary collaboration and provide clinical examples and insights to illustrate the concepts. We propose five considerations when embarking on transdisciplinary collaboration: (1) healthcare settings and jurisdiction, (2) consumer needs, (3) workforce availability, (4) clinician attributes and skills, and (5) team collaboration rules. This paper challenges allied health professionals, leaders and managers working in primary care, as well as policy makers, to review current practice and explore avenues for transdisciplinary collaboration.