Rheumatic immune diseases often affect multiple organs and have complex and variable conditions, making traditional single-discipline teaching difficult to cope with. Rheumatology department physicians often face with challenges in their clinical practice, such as difficulty in diagnosis and insufficient emphasis on training. Interdisciplinary education (IPE) can effectively address the shortcomings of traditional teaching by integrating multiple disciplines such as medicine, nursing, rehabilitation, and pharmacy. This article will explore the application value of IPE in improving the clinical comprehensive ability and interdisciplinary collaboration skills of rheumatology and immunology department residents.

A literature review was conducted by systematically searching domestic and international databases for studies related to interprofessional education and rheumatology residency training, which analyzed the fundamental theories and educational models of IPE, systematically reviewed its international experience and current domestic practices in rheumatology residency training , and summarized the advantages of IPE and challenges in its implementation.

At the international level, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME, 2025 updated version) in America emphasized the importance of interprofessional collaboration in specialty training,  and the European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology (EULAR) promotes interprofessional learning through its Health Professionals in Rheumatology (HPR) program. At the domestic level, Peking Union Medical College Hospital and Zhongshan Hospital affiliated with Fudan University have begun to introduce IPE-related elements, such as multidisciplinary team (MDT) discussions and stratified training, into residency training programs. Existing studies show that IPE can:(1) improve residents' comprehensive ability to manage complex rheumatic diseases; (2) promote team communication and role understanding while reducing medical errors; and (3) improve patient safety and quality of care. The implementation challenges include limitations in time and resources,  lack of interprofessional experience among faculty, and insufficient institutional support.

IPE is highly aligned with the core objectives of rheumatology residency training and is an important approach to solving the difficulties in the training of rheumatology residents, and can effectively improve residents’ diagnostic and treatment level and teamwork ability. However, at present, this field in China is still at an initial exploratory stage, and the implementation effect of IPE needs to be promoted collaboratively from multiple aspects, including curriculum, faculty, system, and evaluation. In the future, efforts should be made to incorporate IPE into standardized residency training curricula, adopt multidimensional quantitative tools to evaluate training effectiveness, and achieve continuous improvement in the quality of residency training.