Attitudes toward physician-nurse collaboration in anesthesia

The purpose of this study was to compare the attitudes of anesthesiologists and nurse anesthetists toward collaboration with each other. Data for this descriptive, comparative study were gathered through a mailed survey to 501 nurse anesthetists and 353 anesthesiologists licensed to practice in 7 state of the United States. Attitude toward collaboration was measured using an adaptation of the Jefferson Scale of Attitudes Toward Physician-Nurse Collaboration. The mean total scores were compared using the t test for independent groups. Mean total scores were higher for the nurse anesthetist group (n = 238) compared with the anesthesiologist group (n = 66). Analysis demonstrated that this difference was significant (t = 14.6, P < .05). Additional analyses failed to show a significant difference based on sexual gender. The results of this study provide some evidence that the divergent perspectives regarding collaboration previously demonstrated between physicians and nurses may also exist in the specialty field of anesthesia. This study provided no support for the supposition that gender contributes to the differences in attitude toward collaboration between physicians and nurses.