ArticleBMJ quality & safety2021
Factors influencing physician responsiveness to nurse-initiated communication: a qualitative study.
Article in BMJ quality & safety, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- Beyond the pager: Rethinking trainee workload in the era of clinical messaging.Journal of hospital medicine · 2026Article
- Association of Vital Sign and Laboratory Abnormalities Detected via Remote Monitoring with ICU Readmission and Mortality: An Observational Cohort Study.Joint Commission journal on quality and patient safety · 2026Observational
- Clinician Communication and Patient Safety in Pediatrics: A Practical Application of Human-Centered Design for Problem Identification and Analysis.Journal of patient safety · 2025Article
- Social Network Analysis of Secure Text Messaging Metadata During Clinical Deterioration in an Inpatient Children's Hospital Setting.Journal of medical systems · 2025Article
- Creating Clarity Amid the Operating Room Clamor: A Mixed Methods Analysis of Noise-Related Barriers and Facilitators to Effective Communication.ORL-head and neck nursing : official journal of the Society of Otorhinolaryngology and Head-Neck Nurses · 2025Article
- Interprofessional communication in a psychiatric outpatient unit - an ethnographic study.BMC nursing · 2023Article
- Identification of the barriers and enablers for receiving a speaking up message: a content analysis approach.Advances in simulation (London, England) · 2023Article
- Content Analysis of Emoji and Emoticon Use in Clinical Texting Systems.JAMA network open · 2023Article
- Clinician Perspectives on Specifications for Metrics to Inform Pediatric Alarm Management.Biomedical instrumentation & technology · 2023Article
- Healthcare professionals' perceptions of interprofessional teamwork in the emergency department: a critical incident study.Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine · 2022Article
- Qualitative Analysis of Team Communication with a Clinical Texting System at a Midwestern Academic Hospital.Applied clinical informatics · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundHow quickly physicians respond to communications from bedside nurses is important for the delivery of safe inpatient care. Delays in physician responsiveness can impede care or contribute to patient harm. Understanding contributory factors to physician responsiveness can provide insights to promote timely physician response, possibly improving communication to ensure safe patient care. The purpose of this study was to describe the factors contributing to physician responsiveness to text or numeric pages, telephone calls and face-to-face messages delivered by nurses on adult general care units.
methodsUsing a qualitative design, we collected data through observation, shadowing, interviews and focus groups of bedside registered nurses and physicians who worked in four hospitals in the Midwest USA. We analysed the data using inductive content analysis.
resultsA total of 155 physicians and nurses participated. Eighty-six nurses and 32 physicians participated in focus groups or individual interviews; we shadowed 37 physicians and nurses across all sites. Two major inter-related themes emerged, message and non-message related factors. Message-related factors included the medium nurses used to convey messages, physician preference for notification via one communication medium over another and the clarity of the message, all of which could cause confusion and thus a delayed response. Non-message related factors included trust and interpersonal relationships, and different perspectives between nurses and physicians on the same clinical issue that affected perceptions of urgency, and contributed to delays in responsiveness.
conclusionsPhysician responsiveness to communications from bedside nurses depends on a complex combination of factors related to the message itself and non-message related factors. How quickly physicians respond is a multifactorial phenomenon, and strategies to promote a timely response within the context of a given situation must be directed to both groups.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.