Physician and Nurse Research in Multidisciplinary Intensive Care Units
Kevin B Laupland1, Fiona Coyer2
1Kevin B. Laupland is an intensivist, Intensive Care Services, at Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, and a professor at the School of Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Health, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Background:
Although clinical care is multidisciplinary, intensive care unit research commonly focuses on single-discipline themes. We sought to characterize intensive care unit research conducted by physicians and nurses.
Methods:
One hundred randomly selected reports of clinical studies published in critical care medical and nursing journals were reviewed.
Results:
Of the 100 articles reviewed, 50 were published in medical journals and 50 were published in nursing journals. Only 1 medical study (2%) used qualitative methods, compared with 9 nursing studies (18%) (P = .02). The distribution of quantitative study designs differed between medical and nursing journals (P < .001), with medical journals having a predominance of cohort studies (29 articles [58%]). Compared with medical journal articles, nursing journal articles had significantly fewer authors (median [interquartile range], 5 [3-6] vs 8 [6-10]; P < .001) and study participants (94 [51-237] vs 375 [86-4183]; P < .001) and a significantly lower proportion of male study participants (55% [26%-65%] vs 60% [51%-65%]; P = .02). Studies published in medical journals were much more likely than those published in nursing journals to exclusively involve patients as participants (47 [94%] vs 25 [50%]; P < .001). Coauthorship between physicians and nurses was evident in 14 articles (14%), with infrequent inclusion of authors from other health care disciplines.
Conclusions:
Physician research and nurse research differ in several important aspects and tend to occur within silos. Increased interprofessional collaboration is possible and worthwhile.
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