Communication between Dutch community nurses and general practitioners lacks structure: An explorative mixed methods study 

Figures & data

Table 2. Characteristics of participating Community nurses.

N = 18	mean	SD
Age in years*	46.1	8.1
‘Confidence towards GP’
Total score (item 1 to 3)	9.7	1.9
Equal conversation partner^# (item 1)	3.1	0.8
Competent conversation partner^# (item 2)	3.6	0.7
Positively persisting^# (item3)	3.0	0.8

SD: standard deviation.

*Age of one person is missing. ^#measured on a Likert scale: 1 = completely disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = completely agree.

Table 1. Data collection procedure.

Steps	During	Data
Baseline data collection	January 1st and January 15th, 2017	1. Online questionnaire on CN demographic data:
		1.1 Age
		1.2 Gender
		1.3 Years of experience
		2. Self-reported confidence rating (‘Confidence towards GP’ score; min 3, max 15)
Recording of telephone conversation	January 15th and February 28th, 2017	3. Transcribed and anonymised reports:
		3.1 Duration
		3.2 Conversation structure (‘Conversation structure’ score; min 1, max 5)
		3.3 Content
Data collection after each conversation	January 15th and February 28th, 2017	4. Satisfaction with conversation rating by GP (‘Satisfaction by GP’ score; min 1, max 5)
		5. Online questionnaire CN on:
		5.1 Familiarity with GP (min 1, max 5)
		5.2 Trust towards GP (min 1, max 5)
Focus group interviews	March 6th and March 13th, 2017	Recorded and transcribed interviews

CN: Community nurse, GP: General Practitioner.

Table 3. Associations between trust, familiarity, confidence towards GP and conversation structure, satisfaction by GP and duration.

	Conversation structure			Satisfaction by GP			Duration
	n	r s	P-value	N	r s	p-value	n	r s	p-value
Trust	23	–0.06	0.80	20	0.09	.72	23	–0.06	.80
Familiarity	23	0.37	0.08	20	0.22	.36	23	0.01	.96
Confidence towards GP	23	0.51	0.01	20	0,56	.01	23	–0.01	.98

r_s: Spearman’s rho correlation coefficient; GP: General Practitioner.