Table 2.

Nurses’ views on communication with medical provider.

Communication area	Theme (number of responses)	Examples (direct quotes)
Difficult situation	Physician Style (31)	The physician was unwilling to allow me to fully explain the situation and my assessment of the patient before giving orders.
		Doctors intimidating nurses-giving us a hard time or being rude to us.
		MD just started yelling for no reason as if he was being bothered and it was not an emergent situation.
	Physician’s treatment decisions (3)	Resident in end stage of life.
		I was following through with initiative of previous nurse for hospice care. Hospice nurse came, contacted on-call doctor re: narcotics; physician denied authorizing hospice.
	Physician language/accent (2)	It was an on-call doctor and he had an accent that was difficult to understand.
	No difficulties (2)
	No response (2)
Barriers to communication	Lack of nurse skill in assessment and data collection (15)	Not calling in a timely manner, unorganized, lacking complete set of facts/assessment.
		Nurses that don’t have everything ready for when MD calls back. They do appreciate organization.
	Time constraints (6)	It is difficult when they act like they don’t have the time to listen. Busy office hours which can cause extreme wait times on phone (>10 min).
	Physician attitude (6)	Mood and disposition of the physician….
	Communication skills-physicians and nurses (4)	Poor listening skills for both.
	On-call medical providers (3)	Talking to MDs that do not know the resident.
	Noise (3)	He didn’t listen to what was happening with the patient. There was too much background noise.
		Can’t often hear well on cell phones.
	No response (3)
Facilitators to communication	Organization of data (35)	Being through and efficient in the information gathered.
		Have all your "ducks in a row" before making the call.
	Nurse confidence (2)	Be confident. Don’t be afraid to ask questions or have orders repeated or clarified.
		Don’t take comments or attitudes personally.
	No response (3)