Assessment of Anaesthesia Nurses’ Attitude to Teamwork

Abstract Teamwork is one of the most important aspects in medicine today. It is known that the operating room is the place where communication is most needed between doctors and other medical staff. The purpose of this study was to analyse the view of nurses towards collaboration between the physician and nurse in an anaesthesiology department depending on education and work experience. The study was conducted in three Lithuanian hospitals. The questionnaires “Jefferson scale of attitudes toward physician–nurse collaboration” and “Barriers of communication between doctors and nurses” were used. The statements of the questionnaires were rated using the Likert scale; the attitude was evaluated as positive when the assessment was more than median (2.5). The results were processed by SPSS Statistics 23.0 pack, using descriptive statistics and ANOVA, with statistically significant results when p < 0.05. A total of 138 nurses participated in this study, all female, aged 43.00 ± 12.48 years and with different education levels. According to the nurses, the most important aspects of teamwork were dominance of physicians (3.08 ± 0.65), nurse’s autonomy (3.46 ± 0.54), patient care (3.33 ± 0.56) and sharing knowledge and cooperation (3.33 ± 0.47) (F = 12.47; p < 0.001). Patient care and autonomy of nurses were most important aspects for nurses with higher education and short job experience, and physician dominance was the most important for nurses with a longer job experience and lower education level. Barriers to cooperation arising from environmental factors are the greatest drivers for ineffective teamwork.