Knowing what the others know: a study on interprofessional communication between nurses and medical doctors

Communication and cooperation between experts from different specialties is a necessary element of professional competence. We have set up a research program to investigate cognitive aspects of interprofessional and interdisciplinary communication. We assume that successful communication essentially relies on communicants' ability to take the perspective of the other, i.e., assessing the background knowledge, expertise, plans, and so on, of one's co-communicators. The present paper reports on an interview study with medical doctors and nurses from three paediatric oncology units. The research interview was especially designed to allow for a detailed assessment of the professionals' ability to take their work-partners' perspective. Two areas will be examined: The ability to assess the work demands resulting from parental questions, and the use of differences in professional perspectives for prognosis. With respect to parental questions, doctors' and nurses' assessments of their respective work partner's task demands turned out to be only partly correct. Furthermore, the results suggest that doctors do not effectively benefit from nurses' experiential knowledge about patients when venturing prognoses. Educational measures designed to improve interprofessional communication could help to overcome these deficits.