Research utilization and interdisciplinary collaboration in emergency care

Objectives: To examine perceptions of nurse-physician collaboration and res earch utilization in a large, county medical center with an emergency medic ine (EM) residency program, to assess differences among nurses, residents, and attending physicians, and to explore the relationship between collabora tion and research utilization, Methods: A cross-sectional, exploratory, cor relational design. Questionnaires measuring four aspects of collaboration-l eadership, communication, problem solving, and coordination-and four aspect s of research utilization-support, attitude, availability, and use-were dis tributed to 115 nurses, 18 attending physicians, and 33 EM residents (n = 1 66). A 59% response rate was achieved. Results: The survey instruments demo nstrated acceptable reliability at 0.70 or better Cronbach's alpha except f or communication timeliness (alpha = 0.64) and predictive validity. Overall , physicians and nurses rated measures of collaboration and research favora bly. However, there were significant differences (p < 0.05) between physici ans and nurses on four measures of collaboration (i.e., physician leadershi p, communication openness within group, communication openness between grou ps, and problem solving within group) and research utilization (research us e), with physicians holding more favorable views than nurses. Three measure s of collaboration predicted 47% of the variance in research use for physic ians; only one measure of collaboration was important for nurses, explainin g 9.3% of the variance in research use. Conclusion: Interdisciplinary colla boration showed some significance in promoting research use in the ED, espe cially for physicians. However, nurse-physician differences in perceptions of collaboration and research use should be examined more fully.