Abstract:
Background: Nurse–physician relationships have been shown to have a significant impact on the
job satisfaction and retention of nurses and physicians in combination with other individual and
organizational factors. In areas where it has been studied, communication failure between nurses
and physicians was found to be one of the leading causes of preventable patient injuries,
complications, death and medical malpractice claims.
Objective: To determine perception of nurses and physicians towards nurse-physician
communication in patient care and associated factors in public hospitals of Jimma zone,
southwest Ethiopia in 2014.
Methods: Institution based cross-sectional study was conducted from March 10 – April 16/2014
among all of 509 participants (341 nurses and 168 physicians) using a pre tested structured self -
administered questionnaire in census method. Data were entered into EpiData version 3.1 and
exported to Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 16.0 for analysis. Factor analysis was
carried out. Descriptive statistics, independent sample t-test, linear regression and one way
analysis of variance were used for data analysis. Variables with P-value < 0.05 was considered as
statistically significant. Finding was presented in tables and graphs.
Results: The response rate of the study was 91.55 % .The mean perceived nurse-physician
communication scores (as the percentages of maximum scale scores) was 50.88±19.7 % for
perceived professional respect and satisfaction and 48.52±19.7% for perceived openness and
sharing of patient information on nurse-physician communication. Age, salary and organizational
factors were the potential predictors for perceived respect and satisfaction. Moreover, Sex,
working hospital, work attitude individual factors and organizational factors were predictors of
perceived openness and sharing of patient information in nurse-physician communication during
patient care.
Conclusion: Perceived level of nurse-physician communication mean score has attention seeking
gap and was lower among nurses than physicians. Hence, there is a need for developing and
implementing nurse-physician communication improvement strategies like discussion forum
regarding nurse physician relationships to solve communication mishaps patient problems.
