A Review of the Clinical Interdisciplinary Collaboration among Nurses and Physicians

Abstract

Background: Care is a team effort that its continuity is not possible by a person alone. Nurses and physicians should have collaboration with other professions to solve care complex problems. Aim: We conducted a review of the literature to evaluate clinical nurses collaboration with other disciplines examined by qualitative approach. Method: We searched all articles that published from 1995 to 2014 in both English and Persian which had been performed interdisciplinary collaboration processes in the clinical nursing. These articles were done with qualitative approach for nurse’s collaboration with other disciplines. We searched using databases of Proquest, Scopus, pub Med, Science Direct, and Iranian databases of Sid, Magiran, Iran Medex. This review was performed using keywords matching with MESH terms such as interdisciplinary relations, nurse-physician relations, care team, collaboration, and their Persian equivalents at the first separately and then with AND/OR as combination. In most studies, the main structure was three components of collaboration process, context of collaboration and consequences that they were emphasized. Results & Conclusions: However context and processes were different but most studies reported outcomes similarity of interdisciplinary collaboration. Thus to achieve common goals between different disciplines working together is essential for effective care in clinical settings.