[Nurse-physician collaboration: a determinant of the quality of care?]

In hospital practice, the most elementary form of interdisciplinary care is the collaboration between nurses and physicians. Physicians rate the quality of collaboration with nurses higher than nurses themselves. Studies on the impact of interdisciplinary interventions on quality of care evaluate complex interventions and it is impossible to distinguish the effects of interdisciplinary care from other facets of the intervention. Two recent studies suggest that a better collaboration between physicians and nurses may improve patient outcomes, and reduce length of stay and hospital costs. What is meant by collaboration should be better defined to allow developing strategies for training health care professionals to collaborate efficiently and for evaluating their impact on health care quality.