Authors

  1. Section Editor(s): Kennedy, Maureen Shawn MA, RN
  2. Jacobson, Joy

Article Content

Nurse-physician relationships fall into five types-collegial, collaborative, student-teacher, friendly stranger, and hostile-adversarial, according to interviews with 20,000 nurses compiled in the February issue of Critical Care Nurse. Nurses in Magnet hospitals reported a high level of collegial (86%) and collaborative (82%) interactions, compared with high collaborative (64%) and friendly stranger (63%) relations in non-Magnet hospitals. At Magnet hospitals, about half as many nurses experienced hostile-adversarial relationships as their peers did at other hospitals. And nurses working on specialized units, especially critical care, have better relationships with physicians than do nurses on other units. Keys to improving interactions include a conflict resolution policy with no tolerance for abuse; interactive, interdisciplinary patient rounds; and competent, self-confident nurses. For more on this topic, see the original research by Weinberg and colleagues in this issue.