Recommendations for how practitioners “should communicate about their work, so as to become ‘more efficient’ and make better use of their ‘team’” are increasingly being requested. However, if we want social work practice to change or improve, we first need to acquire insight into its actual content(s), that is, what practitioners do in different working contexts and how they interact. Based on a systematic review of recent empirical findings from studies on inter- and intra-professional case discussions in social work practice using naturalistic data, this presentation aims to provide insight into backstage case discussions and to provide directions for further research. Goffman´s concept of backstage implies that the discussions in focus take place metaphorically, away from an audience consisting of clients or significant others. In synthesizing the included studies, we identified five types of interaction among practitioners in relation to the case discussed and three types of content that were raised and shared, as well as an apparent mismatch between formal reasons for the discussions and the purpose they serve in practice. A lack of common vocabulary for conceptualizing the discussions and of attention given to their backstage character was also identified. The presentation will highlight an important area for further research and stress the importance of not being blinded by formal purposes or ideological underpinnings in examining intra- and inter-professional discussions in social work; it shows that we should look into what is actually going on in practice.