Abstract
Interprofessionality, defined as the collaborative practice between health professionals from different professions, is essential for health education and performance in Brazil, especially in the context of the Unified Health System (SUS). This study addresses interprofessional education (IPE) and interprofessional collaborative practices (IPC), highlighting experiences, advances, and challenges in the country. Interprofessional education promotes joint learning between professions, developing collaborative skills to improve the quality of care, and comprehensiveness of health care. This work is the result of an integrative literature review, with a qualitative approach, following the six stages of the method, using the PRISMA tool, to answer the following guiding question: "What are the practical applications and challenges for interprofessional education in health in Brazil?". The used descriptors were "interprofessionality"/"interprofessionality in health" in the Scientific Electronic Library Online - SciELO Brazil database, on February 18, 2025, since our focus was on Brazilian experiences. After applying the methodology, 37 references were incorporated by their proposal coherence. Since 2010, the World Health Organization (WHO) has encouraged interprofessional education as a strategy to strengthen health systems, which has become a milestone for interprofessional education in Brazil. One of the change-inducing initiatives that has stimulated IPE is the Education through Work for Health Program (PET-Health), which has played a crucial role in bringing about changes in health education, promoting collaborative practices, and teaching-service-community integration. Experiences such as that of the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp) on the Baixada Santista campus demonstrate the potential of interprofessional education to transform curricula and practices, aligning them with the needs of SUS. Despite the advances, however, challenges persist, such as the predominance of uniprofessional training and the resistance to the inclusion of interprofessionality in the curricula. The effective implementation of interprofessional education requires structural changes in health courses, teacher training, and institutional support. Devices such as the Singular Therapeutic Project (PTS) and user embracement stand out as practical tools to promote interprofessionality in care in practice scenarios. It is concluded that interprofessionality is fundamental for the consolidation of SUS, requiring continuous efforts to integrate interprofessional education into health curricula and practices, with a focus on collaboration, humanization, and user-centred care.