Primary health care promotes partnership in nursing. The purpose of this study was to delineate defining characteristics of partnerships within primary health care and to identify strategies to facilitate the development of these partnerships. Findings from this integrative review of the literature include the development of a partnership framework that emerged from the meanings inherent in the prefixes of words used to describe "multi", "inter", and "intra" partnerships. Also, the findings revealed characteristics of partner expectations, attributes of active and passive participation, and strategies to foster, and barriers to hinder, active participation. Using the developed partnership framework, implications for practice, education, and research have been discerned.