Frequency of nurse–physician collaborative behaviors in an acute care hospital

Abstract

A new culture bolstering collaborative behavior among nurses and physicians is needed to merge the unique strengths of both professions into opportunities to improve patient outcomes. To meet this challenge it is fundamental to comprehend the current uses of collaborative behaviors among nurses and physicians. The purpose of this descriptive study was to delineate frequently used from infrequently used collaborative behaviors of nurses and physicians in order to generate data to support specific interventions for improving collaborative behavior. The setting was an acute care hospital, and participants included 114 registered nurses and 33 physicians with active privileges. The Nurse–Physician Collaboration Scale was used to measure the frequency of use of nurse–physician collaborative behaviors self-reported by nurses and physicians. The background variables of gender, age, education, ethnicity, years of experience, years practiced at the current acute care hospital, practice setting and professional certification were accessed. In addition to analyzing the frequency of collaborative behaviors, this study compares levels of collaborative behavior reported by nurses and physicians.

Keywords::

• Collaboration
• collaborative behaviors
• patient safety
• physicians
• registered nurses
• teamwork

Acknowledgements

This study was conducted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of nursing practice at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA. The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of her committee chair Joyce J. Fitzpatrick, RN, PhD, MBA, FAAN. The authors thank the health care providers who participated in the study.

Declaration of Interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.