Table 3 Thematic structure comparing perspectives on interprofessional collaboration in PHC of Brazil and Germany

Brazil

FHS facilitates coordination of teamwork and shared tasks between nurses and physicians through alternating appointments, joint consultations, etc. Nurses and physicians engage in intensive, direct and easy contact with each other in PHC. FHS encourages interprofessional collaboration.

Nurses’ health-oriented approach to care and contributions to improve access enable them to meet increasingly complex needs

Nurses are still heavily dependent on physicians for clinical tasks; physicians exhibit a paternalistic attitude toward nurses.

The need for physicians’ validation of nurses’ decisions disrupts workflow and leads to informal agreements.

Participants support the expansion of nursing practice in interprofessional collaboration based on autonomy and complementarity rather than substitution.

Germany

PHC provision focuses on GPs, and multiprofessional teams are generally not used. Nurses and GPs have separate tasks. Nurses provide home care services prescribed by physicians but have poor access to physicians, which could allow them to contribute to care decisions. Interprofessional collaboration is highly limited.

Nurses’ unique insights into the lifeworlds of patients and the possibility of mitigating the workloads faced by physicians contribute to the task of meeting complex health needs

Physicians oversee patients care. Nurses are often seen to be subordinate to physicians.

Physicians have control of the funding and regulatory system. Nurses lack representation at the policy level

Participants are divided between those who support the expansion of nursing practice through interprofessional collaboration based on autonomy and complementarity and those who focus on a model of task delegation that does not involve substitution.