An Empirical Study of Communication Barriers Between Nurses and Physicians in Intensive Care Units

Posted: Mar 01, 2024

• Benjamin Cox
• Blake Henderson
• Brandon West

Abstract

Communication between nurses and physicians represents a critical component of patient care in intensive care units, where complex medical conditions, rapid decision-making, and high-stakes interventions demand seamless interdisciplinary collaboration. Despite decades of research and quality improvement initiatives, communication breakdowns persist as significant contributors to medical errors and adverse events in critical care settings. The conventional approach to studying these communication challenges has predominantly relied on self-reported data through surveys, interviews, and retrospective analyses, which inherently suffer from recall bias and social desirability effects. This study introduces a novel methodological framework that combines computational linguistics with real-time ethnographic observation to capture and analyze the nuanced dynamics of nurse-physician communication in their natural clinical context. Our research addresses several gaps in the existing literature. First, we move beyond the well-documented hierarchical barriers to examine the linguistic and structural components of communication that have received limited attention. Second, we employ computational methods to identify patterns that may be imperceptible through traditional qualitative analysis alone. Third, we develop a context-sensitive taxonomy of communication barriers that accounts for the unique temporal, informational, and relational demands of intensive care.