Doctors Perception of Nursing Care in Lubumbashi City Public Hospitals

Abstract

Introduction: Teamwork is an issue that hospitals must encourage. But the fact is that many hospitals do not promote mutual knowledge of different professions for complementarity in order to meet the needs of patients or the population. Our study pursued a three-fold objective: to explore physicians’ perceptions of nursing care, to describe physicians’ perceptions of the role of nurses, and to identify some characteristics of physician-nurse collaboration. Method: We conducted a cross-sectional descriptive study with 14 doctors at Lubumbashi General Reference Hospitals (Sendwe, South Gecamines and University teaching hospital). Data collection took three months, from May 1 to July 31, 2018. Of the exhaustive sample of a population of 25 physicians, only 14 physicians freely consented and participated in the study and constituted the final size of our study sample. The data has been processed with Excel 2013 and Epi-info 7 software version 7.2.1.0. Results: At the end of our study, we found that no doctor has been able to define either the term nurse or nursing. In addition, 21.5% of the doctors thought that the role of the nurse is to execute the decisions of the doctor. Although 78.6% and 64.3% respectively strongly agreed on the nurse’s consideration as a collaborator and staff needing to clarify a medical prescription; 71.4% reported that the nurse did not have an independent role, 100% had no knowledge of the nursing approach, and 100% found that respect for the role of physicians is one of the elements of their collaboration. In the end, all these results showed the ignorance of the term nurse, nursing care and the nursing approach by the doctors of the public hospitals of the city of Lubumbashi. Conclusion: At the end of our research, we found a negative perception of the nurse and nursing care by the physicians participating in our survey. Awareness within the multidisciplinary team about recognizing the role and limitations of the nurse’s skills becomes a necessity. The quality of the doctor and nurse relationship will certainly improve the quality of patient care.