[Sex role orientation and interdisciplinary co-operation]

Interdisciplinary collaboration between nurses and physicians contributes to optimal patient outcomes. Both insufficient knowledge of each other's roles and competencies and the power position of physicians impede nurse-physician collaboration. Health care managers play an important role in the promotion of nurse-physician collaboration. Leadership is associated with masculine traits, but female attributes are crucial in social relationships. Austrian health care management students (n=141, response rate: 93 %) rated themselves, the typical nurse and the typical physician with respect to masculine and feminine traits using the Bem sex-role-inventory (BSRI). The respondents saw themselves as equally masculine and feminine (androgynous self-concept); nurses were rated as significantly more masculine than feminine, whereas physicians were described as masculine sex-typed and significantly less feminine than nurses. For health care managers who also have to promote interdisciplinary collaboration an androgynous self-concept can be regarded as advantageous. They need to reflect on their ideas about nurses and physicians in order to manage the challenge of promoting interprofessional co-operation.