From staffing shortages to burnout, multiple factors have damaged the nurse-physician dynamic over the last few years — but that relationship can be fixed, Angel Mena, MD, and Ali Morin, MSN, RN, wrote in an article on MedPage Today's KevinMD.
Physicians and nurses need each other. Physicians need nurses at the bedside who can navigate patient care while nurses need the support and tools from physicians to effectively step into their roles, they wrote.
Dr. Mena, an internal medicine physician and internal medicine residency program director at Cincinnati-based TriHealth, and Ms. Morin, vice president of nursing informatics at Symplr, a health IT company, offered three ways to build and maintain strong dynamics between physicians and nurses.
- Improve training and support for new nurses: Provide structured training where senior nurses supervise and mentor junior ones to pass along institutional knowledge.
- Implement more institutional training led by both nurses and physicians: There are many overlaps and differences in the roles of physicians and nurses, and learning how to handle patient care as a team can be invaluable to all.
- Streamline communication and staffing: Use effective communication technology to ensure the right messages get to the right person, role or team. Also, find the right schedules to ensure proper staffing. Improving the healthcare worker experience can reduce burnout and keep experienced workers in the field.