Improving Physician and Nurse Collaboration and Communication

“I can find better nurse’s on the street than the ones who work on this floor”. The nurse’s who work on my floor in the facility where I work, are known throughout the hospital as some of the best. Some of the surgeon’s demand for their patients to be admitted to our floor after surgery due to the quality of care that the nurse’s provide the patient’s and their families. Most however are very critical of the staff and have no respect for us at all and complain about us no matter what we do. The comment I quoted previously was made by an attending doctor who of course is never satisfied with the nursing staff on my unit. She continues to make derogatory comments about the nursing staff on my unit, she continuously complains every day in rounds about how there needs to be an increase in communication between us and her residents because her patients are so “fragile”. Yet, when we call sometimes we get no response to pages, if they respond to pages they don’t come to evaluate the patient if necessary until there is serious urging from the nurse, and if anything goes wrong somehow the blame always falls back on the nursing staff.