Supervising across professions: Insights into the art of interprofessional clinical supervision

Background The implementation of interprofessional education in clinical settings is a complex but essential undertaking for improving teamwork and patient safety. In interprofessional training wards, students from multiple professions engage in interprofessional learning by working with, from, and about each other while providing patient care. Supervisors are pivotal to this process, yet supervising across professional boundaries introduces challenges that remain underexplored. Methods This qualitative, exploratory study involved interviews with 16 supervisors (nurses, physicians, physiotherapists, and occupational therapists) from four Interprofessional training wards, in Sweden. Purposeful selection ensured diverse representations. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed via thematic analysis. Results Three themes were developed: l earning to swim in uncharted waters , navigating tensions between profession-specific and interprofessional learning , and j ust call the nurse: the unchosen responsibility and unbalanced leadership of nurses . Across professions, supervisors reported entering IPS with little preparation and relying on learning by doing. They described role ambiguity and challenges in balancing disciplinary expertise with interprofessional goals, often improvising solutions in practice. Nurses’ continuous presence positioned them as central coordinators of student teams, but this role was demanding and underrecognized. Collectively, the findings highlight interprofessional supervision as improvised, negotiated, and unevenly distributed. Conclusion Interprofessional supervision is a fragile but vital practice shaped by individual, organizational, and structural factors. Without clear frameworks and institutional support, responsibility risks are unevenly shouldered. These findings underscore the need to move IPS from tacit improvisation to intentional, shared practice. Investing in supervisor preparation, clearer role definitions, and structural support is essential not only for sustaining interprofessional learning in interprofessional training wards but also for ensuring safe, collaborative patient care in all clinical settings. Trial registration Not applicable. This is a qualitative study and not a clinical trial.