Medical response to the call of the nursing staff
Keywords:
Physician-Nurse relations, Cooperative behavior, Communication, Attitude of health personnelAbstract
Introduction: medical response to the nurse request is significant to provide health services.
Objective: to determine the perception of nursing staff at the medical response to their call in paediatric care and their opinion on strategies for improvement.
Methodology: cross-sectional, descriptive study, a previously validated questionnaire in appearance and content of ten circumstances requiring medical response was used, auto applied to personnel assigned to the ward.
Results: 81 nurses participated. A quick medical response (<10 minutes) was perceived for emergency circumstances such as: presence of seizures in 65.4% of the time, peripheral oxygen desaturation 55.6%, trans or post-transfusion reaction 46.9%, active bleeding 44.4% and respiratory distress in 37 %. For less urgent situations (10 minutes to 1 hour): doubt or error in medication 45.7%; intense parental complaint for a procedure 35.8%; need of changing or starting a diet 35.8%. A later response (1-4 hours) to: problems with an IV 39.5% and 43.2% procedure schedules. The most supported improvement strategy (56.8%) was the constant and mandatory presence of a doctor in the ward.
Conclusions: in urgent situations nursing staff perceive a quick medical response in more than half of the times. For less urgent situations the response is usually between one and four hours, so it is necessary to implement strategies to improve nurse-physician communication.
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