Defining Physician-Nurse Efforts toward Collaboration as Perceived by Medical Students

Hanan H Dahlawi; May M Al Obaidellah; Najwa Abdur Rashid; Amal A Alotaibi; Eman M Al-Mussaed; Mary Mae M Cheung; Sameera Abuaish; Mary Anne Wong Cordero

doi:10.3390/healthcare11131919

Defining Physician-Nurse Efforts toward Collaboration as Perceived by Medical Students

Healthcare (Basel). 2023 Jul 3;11(13):1919. doi: 10.3390/healthcare11131919.

Authors

Hanan H Dahlawi¹, May M Al Obaidellah¹, Najwa Abdur Rashid¹, Amal A Alotaibi¹, Eman M Al-Mussaed¹, Mary Mae M Cheung², Sameera Abuaish¹, Mary Anne Wong Cordero¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Basic Sciences, College of Medicine, Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh 11671, Saudi Arabia.
² College of Arts and Sciences, Notre Dame of Dadiangas University, General Santos City 9500, Philippines.

Abstract

Collaboration between physicians and nurses is essential to healthcare delivery and is associated with high-quality patient care, greater patient satisfaction, and better health outcomes. Hence, it is imperative that doctors and nurses have a particular set of interprofessional collaboration skills. This descriptive cross-sectional study assessed how medical students in the pre-clinical and clinical years perceived attitudes toward collaboration between physicians and nurses in a hospital setting. The Jefferson Scale of Attitude toward Physician-nurse Collaboration (JSAPNC) was reverse-translated into Arabic for the current study. The results showed a total JSAPNC mean score of 46.55, lower than other medical students in other universities. In general, the results of the study showed no significant difference in the total JSAPNC score among medical students when analyzed according to age, clinical exposure, and year level, except in the two factors of JSAPNC: shared education and teamwork (p = 0.038) and caring as opposed to curing (p = 0.043). The findings of this study suggest the necessity of integrating interprofessional education (IPE) across the medical school curriculum because, as future physicians, medical students would be well equipped to treat their patients in partnership with their nursing colleagues.

Keywords: Jefferson scale of attitudes; attitudes toward collaboration; interprofessional collaboration; interprofessional education; physician–nurse collaboration; teamwork.

Grants and funding

PNURSP2023R147/This research is funded by Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University Researchers Supporting Project number (PNURSP2023R147), Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.