• Aishwarya Natarajan, Manuel G Venegas, Dylan Mai, Erin Dowling, Wendy Simon, Antonio M Pessegueiro, Sitaram Vangala, and Anna Dermenchyan.
• Aishwarya Natarajan is a medical student at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. She was the executive director of The Healthcare Improvement and Innovation in Quality (THINQ) Collaborative, Department of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Health from 2020 to 2021.
• Am. J. Crit. Care. 2024 Sep 1; 33 (5): 364372364-372.

BackgroundCommunication and collaboration among health care professionals during bedside rounds improve patient outcomes and nurses' and physicians' satisfaction.ObjectivesTo determine barriers to nurse-physician communication during bedside rounds and identify opportunities to improve nurse-physician collaboration at an academic medical center.MethodsA survey with Likert-scale and open-ended questions regarding professional attitudes toward nurse-physician communication was administered to 220 nurses and physicians in medical-surgical units to assess perceptions of participation in bedside rounds. After the survey was given, observational data from 1007 bedside rounds were collected via a standardized data collection tool.ResultsNurses and physicians perceived different barriers to including nurses in bedside rounds. Nurses most often cited being unaware that bedside rounds were occurring (38 of 46 nurses [83%]); physicians most often cited nurse unavailability (43 of 52 physicians [83%]). Of 1007 observed rounds, 602 (60%) involved in-person contact of nurses and physicians; 418 (69%) of the 602 included a conversation between the nurse and physician about the nurse's concerns. Of 355 rounds with no in-person or telephone contact between nurses and physicians, the medicine team did not contact the nurse in 284 (80%). Conversations about nurses' concerns occurred more often after physician-initiated contacts (73% of 369 contacts) and nurse-initiated contacts (74% of 93 contacts) than after chance encounters (57% of 140 contacts).ConclusionInitiating discussions of care between nurses and physicians and discussing nurses' concerns during bedside rounds have multiple benefits.©2024 American Association of Critical-Care Nurses.

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