While collaborative, multidisciplinary teamwork is widely espoused as the goal of contemporary hospitals, it is hard to achieve. In maternity care especially, professional rivalries and deep-seated philosophical differences over childbirth generate significant tensions. This article draws on qualitative research in several Victorian public maternity units to consider the challenges to inter-professional collaboration. It reports what doctors and midwives looked for in colleagues they liked to work with -the attributes of a "good doctor" or a "good midwife". Although their ideals did not entirely match, both groups respected skill and hard work and sought mutual trust, respect and accountability. Yet effective working together is limited both by tensions over role boundaries and power and by incivility that is intensified by increasing workloads and a fragmented labour force. The skills and qualities that form the basis of "professional courtesy" need to be recognised as WORKPLACE CULTURES and professional relationships in contemporary hospitals are in upheaval from several factors: the impact of neo-liberal health reforms requiring increased efficiencies, greater accountability and managerial power; 1 the questioning of doctors' traditional authority by the consumer health movement, 2 and challenges to traditional medical dominance by nurses and midwives. Relationships between staff in maternity hospitals are especially contentious. Since the 1990s, struggles to introduce new models of care, notably midwifery teams and caseload models, have faced deep-seated professional rivalries and conflicts and sometimes foundered. In Australia as in Britain, tensions are widespread across the maternity care sector, but they are played out in specific local contexts. 3-6 While contemporary state policy initiatives increasingly promote multidisciplinary teamwork and collaboration, 5,7,8 they can underestimate the difficulty of implementing change in practice, especially in an environment of financial stringencies, increased cultural diversity, staff shortages and increased birth numbers.Drawing on qualitative research in several Victorian maternity units, this article considers interprofessional collaboration between midwives and doctors, arguing that new forms of working This study found that effective collaboration among doctors and midwives was limited by tensions over role boundaries, power relationships and incivility that appeared to be related to increasing workload and fragmentation of the workforce. There is a need to address these issues more effectively at policy and education levels to improve future collaborative practice.