More often at present times, services offered by health organizations are based on the collaboration among distinct professionals. In this team work approach, nursing professionals have an important role to play Having as our objective providing nursing professionals with a theoretical basis which facilitates understanding collaboration, the authors publish an article having two sections. In the first section, the authors expound on the theoretical bases giving in depth analysis to the concept of inter-professional collaboration and describing those factors which, according to literature, determine the success of this collaboration in practice.