Nurse/physician collaboration: action research and the lessons learned.
OBJECTIVE: Finding time to add to nursing knowledge while solving problems in a fast-paced healthcare environment is the ultimate challenge for nurse executives. At one hospital, use of an action research model to measure collaboration in nurse/physician led interdisciplinary teams improved the intervention and the approach to outcome measurement. BACKGROUND: Many hospital nurse executives promote collaborative practice, and yet, innovations introduced to foster collaboration are rarely studied prospectively. The best-known data on collaboration is predominantly from correlational studies. Within the rapidly changing practice setting, action research may be a more legitimate strategy for studying interventions longitudinally. METHODS: An action research pretest/posttest design using Baggs' Collaboration and Satisfaction About Care Decisions measured collaboration before and after several interventions to improve nurse/physician collaboration. The sample consisted of 87 pretest and 65 posttest registered nurses working on three medical-surgical units and two intensive care units (ICU). RESULTS: Collaboration scores in the ICUs were higher than those in previous research, but the posttest indicated no significant difference in either ICU nurse or medical-surgical nurse scores. Higher ICU scores may have been related to the organizational focus on teams. A strong significant correlation between nurse report of level of collaboration and satisfaction with decision making was uncovered. CONCLUSIONS: This study contributes to the nurse/physician collaboration literature in that it was longitudinal, used a reliable and valid instrument, and surveyed nurses in medical/surgical units as well as the ICU. Some of the difficulties and benefits of research in today's practice setting are illustrated.