ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how nurses in primary care settings can benefit from collaborating with other nurses, general practitioner (GP), practice teams, other professionals they interface with and patients receiving care. It looks at the benefits and barriers faced with adopting a collaborative approach in general practice and considers the advantages of this approach as primary care moves towards a scaled-up, integrated model of primary care networks. The expansion of the general practice nursing role and sphere of responsibility has expanded but has often been perceived as supporting the needs of the GP role. Collaboration in its simplest terms according to the dictionary definition is ‘to work with others on a project’. The lack of nursing leadership in general practice has an effect on both the quality of care for patients and on the organisational culture. The nursing role in general practice is an important and valuable contributor to the delivery of care to patients.
