Nurse–Physician Inter-Professional Collaboration and Associated Factors at Public Hospitals in Dessie City, Amhara, Northeastern Ethiopia, 2021

INTRODUCTION: Nurse–physician collaboration is an integral part of quality improvement in health care. Collaboration enables individuals to work together to achieve defined and common health purposes. There is limited evidence related to nurse–physician inter-professional collaboration and its associated factors in Ethiopia, particularly in Dessie city public hospitals. OBJECTIVE: To assess nurse–physician inter-professional collaboration and associated factors at public hospitals in Dessie city, Ethiopia, 2021. METHODS: An institutional-based cross-sectional study was conducted among nurses and physicians at public hospitals in Dessie city. A self-administered questionnaire was used for data collection. Stratified simple random sampling techniques were used to select study participants proportional to the sample size allocation. The final sample size was 260 and allocated proportionally to Dessie Comprehensive Specialized Hospital and Boru Meda General Hospital. The data were entered and analyzed using EPI-data version 4.6 and SPSS version 26 software respectively. During analysis, p-values less than 0.25 in binary logistic regression were entered into multivariable logistic regression. Finally, p-values less than 0.05 in multi-variable logistic regression were considered statically significant. RESULTS: The mean score for inter-professional collaboration was 97.40 ± 19.6SD. In this study, inter-professional collaboration among nurses and physicians was 44.2%. This study showed that favorable attitude [AOR=3.205; CI: 1.781–5.766], respondents working in the gynecological department [AOR=0.210; CI: 0.052–0.849], satisfied organizational support [AOR=2.062; CI: 1.140–3.729] and urban residents [AOR=3.996; CI: 1.069–14.931] were factors associated with nurse–physician inter-professional collaboration. CONCLUSION: In this study, nurse–physician inter-professional collaboration was low. Training on the importance of health teamwork, timely monitoring and evaluation of organizational support, and professional empowerment towards a favorable attitude of nurse–physician inter-professional collaboration shall be provided at hospital levels. Routine assessment and timely intervention of the gynecological department for nurse–physician inter-professional collaboration shall be done at hospital levels. Moreover, both quantitative and qualitative research shall be performed for future research.