Patient experience of communication consistency amongst staff is related to nurse-physician teamwork in hospitals.
Mia von Knorring, Peter Griffiths, Jane Ball and 2 others
PMID 32089859WHAT IT FOUND
Patients were less likely to say staff gave them conflicting information when more nurses reported good teamwork with doctors.
The link is at hospital level, so it does not prove one ward's teamwork caused consistent communication.
Key findings
01Each 5% increase in the proportion of nurses who agreed there was a lot of teamwork between nurses and physicians was associated with 7% lower odds that patients reported inconsistent communication from staff.
02Across the included trusts, 77% of nurses agreed there was a lot of nurse-physician teamwork, while 36% of patients reported that staff sometimes or often gave them inconsistent information.
03Patients' perception of inconsistent communication was not significantly related to nurses' mean years of work experience.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The design is cross-sectional, so it cannot show that better teamwork caused consistent communication. The researchers do not know which nurses cared for which patients, only that nurses worked in hospitals where patients were discharged. Patients were asked about staff in general, not specifically nurses or doctors. The teamwork question was not defined, so the study cannot say what kind of teamwork nurses meant. The analysis was at hospital trust level, so ward-level differences are masked and the association may be under- or overestimated. The nurse survey response rate was 39% and the patient survey response rate was 49%.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflict of interest, and the study was supported by FP7 Health.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that improving nurse-physician teamwork will make patients receive consistent information. This is an association across hospitals, and the study did not test teamwork changes or identify which staff gave the conflicting messages.