Stakeholders' perceptions of how nurse-physician communication may impact patient care: protocol for a concept mapping study

Effective nurse-physician interprofessional communication is important to ensure that patients receive evidence-based care and treatment. There is a gap in knowledge about how nurse-physician communication impacts patient care. We propose using concept mapping to develop an in-depth understanding of patients, nurses, and physicians' perspectives on how physician-nurse communication affects patient care. There are six phases to concept mapping: determining the focus, generating statements, structuring statements, producing the map, interpretating the map, and map utilization. We will use 'Ariadne', a concept mapping software package for data collection and analysis. The study outcome will be a two-dimensional concept map providing a visual representation of how nurse-physician communication influences patient care. We will report similarity and differences among three stakeholder groups. Our research will inform the development of testable hypotheses about nurse-physician communication and patient care.