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This study set out to explore roles of, and relationships between, nurses and doctors currently working in New Zealand primary care settings. Findings indicate that effective interprofessional relationships between individual doctors and nurses can, and often do, exist in New Zealand primary care settings, although they are not universal. The identification and separation of vocational and business roles, and the development of professional identity, form the basis for a theory of trust development in nurse-doctor interprofessional relationships in New Zealand primary care. Professional identity is related to demonstration of professional competence, in turn related to development of mutual interprofessional respect and enduring interprofessional trust.