NURSE CHARACTERISTICS ASSOCIATED WITH PERCEPTIONS OF COMMUNICATION AND TEAMWORK

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate healthcare provider’s characteristics that have a significant effect on their perceptions of communication effectiveness, teamwork, and patient safety culture.

Background: Effective nurse-physician communication and teamwork, as well as patient safety culture, were identified as important variables in reducing negative patient outcomes. Hence, identification of factors that affect inter-professional communication, teamwork, and patient safety culture is critical so that the potential negative impact on patient outcomes can be minimized through targeted interventions aimed at improving these provider outcomes. Educational interventions, including communication and teambuilding interventions are often provided applying a generic, large-group, pedagogic teaching method; however, healthcare educators may optimize training outcomes by varying their teaching to meet the individual needs of adult learners.

Methods: This study applied a cross-sectional design and used a convenience sampling method to recruit a final sample of 61 nurse and physician participants from two medical/ surgical units in two comparable hospitals located in Los Angeles County. All Registered Nurses and hospitalist physicians who met the inclusion criteria of 21 years of age or older, were employed by one of the two participating hospitals on a full-time or part-time basis for at least three months, and who provided direct patient care in the applicable medical/ surgical unit were considered for participation in the study. Multiple regression analysis was performed using the “enter” method, to identify specific provider characteristic variables that resulted in significant variances in the communication, teamwork, and patient safety culture perception scores.

Results: Results from this study show that there were significant relationships between nurses’ race, age, and years of nursing practice in the U.S. and their perceptions of communication, accounting for about 70% of the variance in the nurse communication perception scores F(25,22)=2.065, p=.045, R²= .701. Significant relationships were also found between nurses’ gender, age, race, years of nursing practice in the U.S., years of employment in the current unit, English proficiency levels and their perceptions of teamwork, accounting for almost 82% of the variance in teamwork perception scores F(25,22)=3.925, p=.001, R²= .817. There were no significant relationships between nurse’s characteristics and their perceptions of patient safety culture. Furthermore, there were no significant relationships between physician’s characteristics and their perceptions of communication effectiveness, teamwork, or patient safety culture.

Conclusion/ Implications: Based on the results of this research, tailoring healthcare provider communication and teamwork training according to specific provider characteristics (e.g. nurse's race/culture, years of experience) may maximize training results. It may be helpful to supplement the educational interventions with additional training, such as assertiveness training and to hold more frequent, smaller group sessions that accommodate various levels of competencies and work experiences. Such strategies are especially relevant when there is a high percentage of staff members who practiced or received their pre-licensure education in another country and/or have different cultural backgrounds, or for new graduates who may have lower levels of competencies as compared to more experienced staff.