I have come across some terms recently that are confusing. For many years multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary words were used to describe the many different health care professions. For example, one might say "multidisciplinary collaboration." Now the correct terminology seems to be interprofessional collaboration. One explanation that I've seen says that "disciplines" are often within one profession (such as the discipline of orthopedics or pediatrics within the profession of medicine) so that "interprofessional" describes the many professions better.

Which terms have you seen in your professions? Is this petty, do you think, or does the "interprofessional" term do a better job of defining relationships between the professions?

I have never worked in an area that needed to use such terms.

However, I remember an experimental college course called "Freshman Interdisciplinary Honors", jointly taught by professors in History, Literature and Sociology. It was a bust, at least for me.

But I thought it was an appropriate use of "interdisciplinary". The three areas are indisputably different disciplines, even if the teaching of them isn't.

In your case, are orthopedics and pediatrics really considered to be different disciplines? I wouldn't have thought so.

But given that, "interdisciplinary" seems to be the best word. "multi" doesn't convey the collaboration overtones. "professional" is too vague. Does it mean what you say, or does it mean collaborative work among Doctors, Lawyers and Bricklayers? Since you describe orthopedics and pediatrics as within the profession of medicine, I would have guessed the latter.

How about "inter-specialization"?

Is there also "intraprofessional" in the medical field? That word begs for a hyphen, by the way.

I just noticed that your examples all used the word collaboration. In such cases, perhaps "multi" works as well as "inter", but if the word is also used to describe research, or a study, then "inter" seems better.

Valentine, it's so great to see a newbie join right in! The reason all my examples are using collaboration is probably a selfish one. I am currently writing a chapter in a book on mult-disciplinary collaboration, and I am thinking of writing about interprofessional collaboration, rather than multi-disciplinary collaboration, in my chapter.

Perhaps the OED will give me some direction.

Given that I have no profession, I would assume that "multi-disciplinary" would refer to a kinky sort of bondage thing with more than one dominator/dominatrix.

Oh...I am steeped in writing my chapter now, and I need help. I found this in one article, cited from a Webster's: "The word collaborate comes from the Latin term collaborare which means "to work with one another." When I read the OED, it says:

quote:

[f. mod.F. collaborer, or its original, L. collabr-re (f. col- together + labrre to work, LABOUR): see -ATE.]

Can someone here please tell me (and I am sorry to sound so stupid!) how the French and Latin are related? I always have trouble figuring out the etymology in the OED, and yet it's surely our gold standard. I also find it interesting that collaboration has the first citation (1860), with collaborate's first citation being in 1871. Yet, the etymology of collaboration refers to that of collaborate.

I am sure I am going into way to much detail on the definition of this word, and probably none of the readers will give a hoot.

I'm not sure either, Kalleh. I think it means collaborate either came from the modern French word collaborer, which, in turn, came from the Latin collabora-re or straight from the Latin. Then it breaks collabora-re down to its prefix, col- together, and its root laborare.

When you try to cut and paste collaborer from the OED Online, it comes out as collab{omac}r{amac}-re, as I'm sure you know. I finally figured out that {omac} and {amac} mean "a with a macron" and "o with a macron."

Those who understand etymology, how am I doing?

Thanks, Tinman. I am going to use the Latin then, unless I hear differently.

I'd just love to have little different perspective on the word than the previous writer (who used MW) had.