Table 1 An example of how the systematic text condensation was conducted [25]

Overall impressions from the transcripts were identified, e.g.:

The students seemed to experience the IPE-training as meaningful, as they did not seem to know much about each other’s competence in advance.

Learning outcomes was identified as one of the preliminary themes.

Meaning units from the transcripts were identified, e.g. this quote from a student in clinical nutrition:

“You see how dependent you are on the other professions to find the underlying factors that can influence food intake. I definitely saw the value of having all the professions present. That was very cool. [You understand] how you can use each other on those things.”

The unit of meaning was coded as new understanding/awareness of each other.

The units of meaning from each of the code groups were condensed and written into the result section.

E.g.: “For most students, the interprofessional situation was described as new; regarding both collaboration and the ambiguous approach to solving patients’ complex health needs together.”

The themes were redefined and renamed during the process. This example was placed under the theme Complex patients as learning opportunities - an eye-opener for future IPC.

Some citations from the transcripts were extracted to illustrate each of the themes. The results were compared to existing literature on the field.

The essence of this example was described thusly:

“IPE in nursing homes appears to create a safe forum for students to step out of their uniprofessional approach (and to adopt) other more collaborative practices.”

To ensure a correct interpretation of the data, the transcripts were read through again by one of the researchers.