This chapter provides a broad overview of the field of interprofessional teamwork in health care, and thus helps to contextualize subsequent chapters in the book. It explains the need for interprofessional teams in healthcare delivery and identifies classic themes in healthcare teamwork literature, such as interprofessional team roles, interpreting them from a communication perspective. This perspective helps us to document interprofessional communication practices that help and hinder effective teamwork. The chapter surveys common challenges to interprofessional teamwork, such as juggling demands on time, learning how to interact effectively with other healthcare professionals and patients, navigating knowledge differences, and productively managing conflict. While emphasizing the importance of communication as information transmission for shared task effectiveness, the chapter also introduces the relational and interpersonal dimensions of IP healthcare teams.