APGO

Background: Preparing future physicians to work collaboratively with nurses is a must for today’s educators. Effective physician-nurse collaboration improves patient care and health outcomes. Medical students’ views of the physician-nurse relationship and how these views may evolve during their clerkships have not been well examined.  

Methods: Medical students on their first clinical clerkship completed the Jefferson Survey of Attitudes Towards Physician-Nurse Collaboration on the first and last day of their six-week obstetrics and gynecology clerkship.  This 20-question instrument addresses areas of responsibility and collaboration between physicians and nurses and has construct validity and reliability.  All questions used a 4-point Likert scale (1=strongly disagree, 4=strongly agree).  Pre- and post-clerkship scores were compared using paired t-tests.

Results: 25 students completed the pre- and post-surveys with a 100% response rate.  Students overall had positive views of the physician-nurse relationship.  At the completion of the clerkship, medical students felt more strongly that “during their education; medical and nursing students should be involved in teamwork in order to understand their respective roles” (pre: 3.82, post: 3.95, p=0.042), and that “there are many overlapping areas of responsibility between physicians and nurses” (pre: 3.26, post: 3.57, p=0.008). 

Discussions: Our work reveals promising data that medical students begin their clinical clerkships with positive views of the physician-nurse relationship.  Furthermore after the completion of their first clerkship, the students had significantly higher views of the importance of collaboration and shared responsibility.

Keywords: Interprofessional education