The role of professional and team commitments in nurse-physician collaboration.

AIM: To analyse the effect of both professional and care unit commitments on attitudes towards interprofessional collaboration between nurses and physicians. BACKGROUND: The effects of both professional and care unit commitment on inter-professional collaboration have not been taken into account together, and previous research has analysed only one profession at a time, neglecting the nurse-physician comparison. METHOD: A cross-sectional survey of 138 physicians and 359 nurses was used. RESULTS: For physicians, professional commitment decreased attitudes towards interprofessional collaboration whereas care unit commitment had a positive influence. Conversely, for nurses, the professional commitment had a significant positive effect on attitudes towards interprofessional collaboration whereas care unit commitment had no significant effect. CONCLUSION: Intergroup relations affect the extent to which nurses and physicians are inclined to engage in interprofessional collaboration. Professional and care unit commitments had different effects on attitude toward the inter-professional collaboration of nurses and physicians. IMPLICATION FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: Inter-professional collaboration is affected by the relationship between physicians and nurse at the professional group level. Managers who want to change and improve inter-professional collaboration should pay close attention to the interplay between changes they are introducing and well-established identities and practices between professionals.

Psychosocial predictors of collaborative practice between nurses and physicians working in hospitals.

BACKGROUND AND AIM OF THE WORK: Works from healthcare management and organizational psychology prove that psychosocial variables linked to professional identity are strongly associated with nurse-physician collaborative practice. However, literature pays little attention to the role of these variables. Moreover, evidence for the relation between collaborative practice on psychosocial variables for physicians is rather sparse. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship among self-efficacy, team commitment, professional commitment, and collaborative practice in both nurses and physicians. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey was adopted and questionnaire was distributed to 269 nurses and 124 physicians working in different hospitals. RESULTS: The perception of collaborative practice enhanced the self-efficacy and team commitment of both professionals. For nurses, professional commitment and self-efficacy positively predicted a willingness to collaborate; for physicians, professional commitment hindered a willingness to collaborate, while self-efficacy had no effect. CONCLUSIONS: The study indicates that collaborative practice is an important contextual resource bolstering self-efficacy and team commitment in both professional groups. However, strong professional commitment hinders the willingness of physicians to collaborate with nurses in a way that recognizes the autonomy of nurses