Table 3.

Main Themes on the Causes of Conflicts Within Multiprofessional Healthcare Teams

Theme	Illustrative Quote
Professional hierarchy	Due to the current situation in Nigeria, where non-doctors want to be on the same level with doctors, acrimony has set in. I can also say there is an inferiority complex, because you’ll find that most of these other professionals were candidates who wanted to read medicine, but eventually they couldn’t do that. ki/doctor/Q
Role ambiguity	I think to a large extent, we don’t have systems, and that leaves everybody to try and define his role by himself, that is, each of the professional groups. In the process of self-definition of roles, of course, in the absence of an arbiter, there is bound to be cross-over, and those areas are now the breeding grounds for conflict. fgd/doctor/100Z
Poor communication	As a human being, If you’re [so] suppressed that you can’t communicate, because, for me, communication is the livewire of everything. When there is no effective communication, you vent it out, sometimes through industrial action. fgd/nurse/400Q