Background: Nurse-physician communication has been shown to have a significant impact on the job satisfaction and retention of staff. In areas where it has been studied, communication failure between nurses and physicians was found to be one of the leading causes of preventable patient injuries, complications, death and medical malpractice claims.
Objective: The objective of this study is to determine perception of nurses and physicians towards nurse-physician communication in patient care and associated factors in public hospitals of Jimma zone, southwest Ethiopia.
Methods: Institution based cross-sectional survey was conducted from March 10 to April 16, 2014 among 341 nurses and 168 physicians working in public hospitals in Jimma zone. Data was collected using a pre-tested self-administered questionnaire; entered into EpiData version 3.1 and exported to Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 16.0 for analysis. Factor analysis was carried out. Descriptive statistics, independent sample t-test, linear regression and one way analysis of variance were used. Variables with P-value < 0.05 were considered as statistically significant.
Results: The response rate of the study was 91.55%. The mean perceived nurse-physician communication scores were 50.88±19.7% for perceived professional respect and satisfaction, and 48.52±19.7% for perceived openness and sharing of patient information on nurse-physician communication. Age, salary and organizational factors were statistically significant predictors for perceived respect and satisfaction. Whereas sex, working hospital, work attitude individual factors and organizational factors were significant predictors of perceived openness and sharing of patient information in nurse-physician communication during patient care.
Conclusion: Perceived level of nurse-physician communication mean score was low among nurses than physicians and it is attention seeking gap. Hence, the finding of our study suggests the need for developing and implementing nurse-physician communication improvement strategies to solve communication mishaps in patient care.