Interprofessional collaboration between nurses and doctors for treating patients in surgical wards

Interprofessional collaboration will be one of the main factors in the effort to increase patient safety in the coming years. Research has identified several challenges to interprofessional collaboration between nurses and doctors, where fragmentation of both education and clinical practice contributes to a strong affiliation to one's own profession with little emphasis on collaboration. The aim of this study was to generate more knowledge about how nurses and doctors experience interprofessional collaboration in observation and treatment of patients on a surgical ward. The study was conducted in 2018 and used an explorative qualitative design that was based on four semi-structured focus group interviews. The respondents were 11 nurses and seven doctors with experience from different surgical specialties and employed in three different surgical wards in a Norwegian hospital. The data were analyzed using systematic text-condensation. The following three main categories, each with two subcategories, emerged: 1) Organization and culture: a lack of interprofessional meeting places and experience-based hierarchy; 2) Communication: use of communication tools and little room for professional discussions; and 3) Trust and respect: dependence and recognition and a blurred distribution of responsibility. Both nurses and doctors wished for closer interprofessional collaboration in observation and treatment in the surgical ward; however, organizational limitations with few interprofessional meeting places and time pressure made this difficult.