[The significance of appearance in physician-nurse collaboration]

According to nurses' assessment, physician-nurse collaboration is problematic. The aim of the study was to investigate whether nurses believe physicians' appearances is significant for their ability to collaborate.

This is a single-blinded, quasi-experimental intervention study. All physicians included will undergo a total plastic surgical body makeover. Half of the included physicians are to be operated with a view to enhance their physical features, half to weaken their physical features. Multifactorial ANOVA analysis will be used to secure the division. The Jefferson Scale of Attitudes Toward Physician-Nurse Collaboration will be used for baseline and follow-up study of the nurses' assessment.

Due to ethical considerations, researchers had difficulties finding surgeons prepared to perform procedures aiming at weakening the physicians' physical features. Furthermore, it proved difficult to find physicians willing to undergo surgery with a view to weaken their physical features. Consequently, the study was never realized. Additionally, the study experienced difficulties raising the funding needed to cover surgery costs for all included physicians.

We conclude that physicians often have difficulties collaborating with nurses, regardless of their appearance. It seems that physicians are not interested in improving the collaboration with nurses, and further studies are therefore needed to improve physician-nurse collaboration. We recommend in-depth interviews to achieve harmonic interaction leading to a prolific and close future collaboration.