Table 1.
General Information on Categorization for Answering Questions on Inter-Physician Collaboration of the Included Studies (n = 63, in Chronological Order Based on Publication Year)
| Reference | Study Characteristics | What we Learned About Inter-Physician Collaboration | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Country | Study Design | Terminology | Specialties | Study Purpose | Influencing Factors | Measurements | Outcomes | |
| Luke & Thomson (1980)22 | USA | Chart Review (n = 183) | Consultation | Not specified | Exploratory examination of informal relationships among physicians | Groups having same reimbursement mechanisms are more likely to consult one another | Consultation frequency | - |
| Nakao & Axelrod (1983)23 | USA | Survey (n = 100) | Communication | Not specified | Explore consensus as to meaning of adjectives and adverbs used to express frequency in the medical literature | Greater commonality of meaning among native (English) speakers | Communication interpretation | - |
| Ferguson & Rubinstien (1987)24 | USA | Chart Review / Interviews (n = 85) | Consultation | Surgery/ Internal Medicine | Examine the practice of preoperative medical consultations in community hospital setting | - | Consultation quality | Changes in patient management (medication, laboratory test, procedure, anesthesia) |
| Leonard, Babbs, and Creed (1990)25 | UK | Survey (n = 110) | Communication | Psychiatry | Examine written communication between psychiatrists and other hospital doctors | Preference for clear referral letters of about one page long with highlighted main points. Many physicians would like a personal discussion | - | - |
| Akre, Falkum, Hoftvedt, and Aasland (1997)26 | Norway | Survey (n = 2628) | Communication | Not specified | Explore perceived communication atmosphere between physician colleagues in various arenas of Norwegian health care | Low degree of autonomy and high degree of stress are associated with interpersonal relationships not conducive to learning and coping | Communication atmosphere | - |
| Katz et al (1998)27 | USA | Survey (n = 396) | Consultation | Cardiology/ Surgery/ Anesthesiology | Ascertain what surgeons, anesthesiologists and cardiologists is important to obtain from a cardiology consultation and the effect of cardiologists’ recommendations on perioperative management | - | Consultation quality | Changes based on recommendations in preoperative and postoperative management, not in intraoperative management |
| Madjar et al (2001)3 | USA | Survey (n = 229) | Collaboration | Urologists / Gynecologists | Examine differences among urologists and gynecologists’ treatments and to characterize the collaboration between them | Statistically significant correlation between extent of collaboration and specialty and between degree of collaboration and country of practice | Collaboration (frequency, when, reasons not) | - |
| Dukerich, Golden, and Shortell (2002)28 | USA | Focus Groups/ Survey (n = 1504) | Cooperation | Not specified | Examine relationships among physicians’ organizational identification and cooperative behaviors | Organizational identification is positively related to engaging in cooperative behaviors. | Cooperative behaviors | - |
| Aminzadeh et al (2003)6 | Iran | Chart Review (n = 110) | Consultation | Infectious disease specialist | Analyze current referral letters which request infectious disease consultation to improve consultation based on medical records | - | Referral letter content | Reduction of unnecessary and inadequate antibiotic use |
| Stoller & Striet (2003)29 | USA | Survey (n = 181) | Consultation | Medicine / Surgery / Pediatrics | Assess clinicians’ views on the determinants of effective inpatient consultation and the existing process of inpatient consultation | Direct physician-to-physician communication is valued when requesting and responding to an inpatient consult | Consultation value; Consultation satisfaction | - |
| Conley, Jordan, and Ghali, (2009)30 | Canada | Chart Review (n = 188) | Consultation | Internal medicine | Determine percentage of consultation requests from general internal medicine that pose a clear clinical question to medical subspecialists, assess frequency of direct communication and describe differences in consultation process by subspecialty | Differences between subspecialties were seen (frequency consulted, urgency, direct contact) although not statistically significant | Consultation content | - |
| Hess, Lynn, Holmboe, and Lipner (2009)31 | USA | Survey (n = 803) | Consultation Communication | Not specified | Evaluate a tool called the ‘communication with referring physicians practice improvement module’ which assesses and encourages improved communication among physician consultants and referring physicians | Consultants’ communication were modestly associated with their gender and type of medicine subspecialty. | Communication quality | - |
| Apker et al (2010)32 | USA | Tool development based on discourse analysis | Handoff Communication | Emergency / General Medicine | Develop and evaluate a handoff communication assessment tool. | - | Handoff content and language | - |
| Boulware, Dekarske, and Filice (2010)33 | USA | Survey (n = 323) | Consultation | Not specified | Learn physicians’ preferences for elements of an ideal inpatient medical consultation | Recommendations for effective consultation, first priority clearly state a question | - | - |
| Molleman et al (2010)9 | Netherlands | Survey (n = 1827) | Multidisciplinary Team Meeting | Not specified | Examine consequences for medical specialits of participating in multidisciplinary medical team meetings in terms of perceived clinical autonomy, domain distinctiveness, and professional accountability | - | Involvement in multidisciplinary medical teams | Physicians more involved in multidisciplinary team meetings feel less clinical autonomy and more accountable to other specialties |
| Gasiorek & van de Poel (2012)34 | Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Belgium | Survey (n = 188) | Communication | Not specified | Explore language-discordant mobile medical professionals’ interactions with other doctors across contexts. | A mobile medical professional have issues with communication including difficulty with small talk, pronunciation, nonverbal communication and related cultural norms. They are less confident speaking to superiors than speaking to peers | - | - |
| Kessler et al (2012)35 | USA | Prospective randomized study (n = 43) | Consultation | Emergency / General Medicine | Evaluate whether a standardized consultation model in the emergency department would improve physicians’ ability to relay appropriate information and communicate successfully during consultation | Residents trained in using a standardized model for clinical consultation received higher ratings for their effectiveness. No natural progression in consulting skills with increased experience was shown | Consultation effectiveness rating | - |
| Kirschbaum (2012)36 | USA | Survey (n = 58) | Communication | Surgery / Anesthesiology | Examine communication variables that are associated with face-negotiation theory in a sample of operating-room physicians | Differences between the two groups of operating room-physicians which may result in different communication patterns. Both groups recognize the importance of collaboration as surgical team members | Factors underlying to communication (independence, interdependence, self-concern, awareness of others, conflict style) | - |
| Kirschbaum, Rask, Brennan, Phelan, and Fortner (2012)37 | USA | Pre- and posttest survey (n = 44) | Communication | Obstetrics / Anesthesiology | Determine effectiveness of multidisciplinary team training on organizational culture and team communication | Nonsignificnat variance between obstetricians and anesthesiologists. Significant variance from pretest and posttest suggesting the training used in the study can improve communication for more effective collaboration | Factors underlying to communication (independence, interdependence, self-concern, awareness of others, conflict style) | - |
| Orchard, King, Khalili, and Bezzina (2012)38 | Canada | Tool development based on literature review | Collaboration | Not specified | Develop, test, and refine the assessment of interprofessional team collaboration scale | - | Discrete elements of interprofessional care (partnership, shared decision making, cooperation, coordination) | - |
| Carr et al (2013)7 | USA | Rotation evaluation / Program leadership meetings / Survey (n =26) | Co-management | Pediatrics / Surgery | Describe a 5-year experience with a co-management model in a pediatric residency program | The dyadic model of transition led to positive changes in self-assessed preparedness to provide transition care and engage colleagues around the care of shared patients | - | Increased knowledge and trust between pediatric residents and surgeons |
| Nayak, Beaulieu, Rubin, Jafi, & Lipson (2013)39 | USA | Survey (n = 160) | Communication | Radiology | Identify referring physicians’ preferences about radiology reports and quantify perceived value of multimedia reports compared with narrative text reports | Radiology reports with embedded images are viewed favorably with potential for beneficial outcomes | - | - |
| Pimmer, Mateescu, Zahn, and Genewein (2013)40 | Switzerland | Experiment (n =42) | Communication | Medical students | Determine the effects of different synchronous smartphone-based modes of communication | Simple integration of images did not lead to improved knowledge gains, whereas images with guided noticing did. Integrating images was significantly more positive evaluated for support than only speech. | - | - |
| Uddin, Hamra, and Hossain (2012)41 | Australia | Data analysis (n = 85) | Collaboration | Not specified | Determine the effect of collaboration networks among healthcare professionals on patients’ medical condition | - | Social network analysis | In hospitals were physicians are on average less strong connected there are higher readmission rates and higher costs than in hospitals where physicians have a strong connection. |
| Uddin, Hossain, Hamra, and Alam (2013)42 | Australia | Data analysis (n = 85) | Collaboration | Not specified | Explore physician collaborations using measures of social network analysis and exponential random graph model | - | Social network analysis | Increased links among physicians, more relationships to maintain is positively correlated with hospitalisation cost and readmission rate. In network with small number of actors with a major collaboration and communication role is correlated with lower hospitalisation cost and readmission rate |
| Anthoine, Delmas, Coutherut, and Moret (2014)43 | France | Tool development based on literature review / professional panel | Communication | Not specified | Develop and test psychometric properties of the communication and sharing information scale which assesses specifically interprofessional communication | - | Sharing of medical information, effectiveness communication | - |
| Bruckel et al (2014)44 | USA | Survey (n = 43) | Collaboration | Cardiology / Cardiac Surgery | Assess the prevalence of Heart Teams and their association with collaboration in routine practice | Improved subjective collaboration between surgeons and cardiologists at institutions with case conferences and heart teams | Collaboration (existence, satisfaction) | - |
| Gupta (2014)45 | UK | Pre- and posttest data analysis (n = 494) | Multidisciplinary Team Work | Geriatrics / Orthopedic Surgery | Assess impact of a geriatrician-led comprehensive and collaborative hip fracture care on hip fracture outcomes | Care model improves multidisciplinary teamwork between geriatrician and orthopaedic surgeon | - | Significant reduction in time to surgery and in hospital length of stay |
| Kessler et al (2014)46 | USA | Survey (n = 760) | Handoff | Emergency / General Medicine | Describe current status of inpatient handoff, describe training of resident on inpatient handoff, assess opinion about best practices for inpatient handoff | Handoff factors identified as important include identifying high-risk patients, designating interrupted time to perform the handoff, and standardizing information provided during handoffs | - | - |
| Rosenkrantz, Kiritsy, and Kim (2014)47 | USA | Survey (n = 49) | Communication | Several | Evaluate the degree of variability in clinicians’ interpretation of expressions used by radiologists to communicate their level of diagnostic confidence within radiological reports | - | Communication interpretation | - |
| Hewett, Watson, and Gallois (2014)48 | Australia | Survey (n = 147) / Interviews (n = 10) | Communication | Not specified | Explore medical records through the lens of communication accommodation theory | Specialists asked to contribute to the care of patients under the care of another specialty underaccomodate when communicating with treating specialists | Communication understanding | - |
| Bradley et al (2015)15 | UK | Survey (n = 606) / Focus group | Communication | Not specified | Explore experience with rude, dismissive and aggressive communication in hospitals | Seniority is relatively protective against rudeness. A subset of predictable specialties are more likely to be rude, dismissive, or aggressive in their communication. Happens becaus of workload, lack of support, culture | Frequency and effects of rude communication | When exposed to rude, dismissive, aggressive behavior mistakes are made endangering patient safety and making staff feel sad, angry and demotivated |
| Fatahi, Krupic, and Hellström (2015)49 | Sweden | Focus groups | Consultation | Radiology | Study radiologists’ experiences of written and oral communication with referring clinicians and its potential implications for decision making and patient care | Radiologists emphasize sufficient use of a communication tool. And a preference for oral instead of written communication | - | - |
| Kirschbaum et al (2015)16) | USA | Pre- and posttest survey (n = 85) | Communication | Anesthesiology / Surgery / Obstetrics / Gynecology | Measure the effect of multidisciplinary communication training on latent variables of communication | Significant increase and decrease in scores supporting more participatory communication and teamwork after training, especially among surgical physicians. Variance in pre training scores of conflict style for each physician group. After training all physicians integrating style approximately same and higher than pre-training | Factors underlying to communication (independence, interdependence, self-concern, awareness of others, conflict style) | - |
| Mazurenko & Hearld (2015)50 | USA | Survey (n = 4720) | Communication | Not specified | Examine the relationship between a medical practice’s external environment and physician engagement in communication activities | Higher income levels and an urban location are associated with higher odds of communication with other physicians | Time spent on communication | - |
| Sadigh et al (2015)51 | USA | Survey (n = 200) | Consultation | Radiology | Evaluate referring physicians’ perceptions of multimedia-enhanced radiology reporting as an alternative to traditional text-only radiology reporting | Favorable opinions of added value of multimedia-enhanced reporting | Satisfaction | - |
| Smith et al (2015)52 | USA | Survey (n = 126) | Handoff | Emergency / General Medicine | Assess physicians’ perceptions of the ED admission handoff process and identified potential barriers to safe patient care | - | Communication quality | Ineffective handoffs harm patients |
| Aripoli, Fishback, Morgan, Hill, and Robinson (2016)53 | USA | Pre- and posttest survey (n = 115) | Collaboration | Radiology / Internal Medicine | Determine if incorporating radiology residents into clinical rounds would strengthen relationship between radiology residents and referring clinicians | Introduction of the ”radiology rounds” increased face-to-face communication and clinical collaboration | Collaboration (relationship initiation, trustsworthiness) | Perceived patient care benefits. Increased trust of referring clinicians in radiologists and increased credibility of radiological interpretations |
| Dickerson et al (2016)54 | USA | Patient review (n = 100) | Communication | Radiology / Surgery | Determine if direct in-person communication between actue care surgical tam and radiologists alters surgical decision making | - | - | After multidisciplinary meeting discussing patients substantial changes in patient management, not due to different interpretation of imaging |
| Golab et al (2016)55 | Poland | Case study | Communication | Surgery | Determine whether a 3D model helps to plan and perform a complicated surgery | The 3D model helped draft a surgical plan that was accepted by all surgical teams involved with urology and cardiac surgery teams | - | Using the 3D model increased patient safety, facilitated communication between surgical teams and reduced surgery duration |
| Gulacti, Lok, Hatipoglu, and Polat (2016)56 | Turkey | Consultation observation (n = 519) | Consultation | Emergency medicine | Evaluate WhatsApp messenger usage for communication between consulting and emergency physicians | - | Consultation content | - |
| Heidemann et al (2016)57 | USA | Pre- and posttest survey (n = 110) | Consultation | Not specified | Characterize the scope, identify root causes and implement a data-derived solution for the problems related to difficulty identifying correct consulting physicians | Introduction of a unified university hospital paging system | Satisfaction | Physicians concluded that the opportunity to contact the right physicians decreased adverse outcomes, increased satisfaction, improved the process, and decreased delays in patient care |
| Hollingsworth et al (2016)58 | USA | Data analysis (n = 251630) | Teamwork | Not specified | Test whether teamwork among physicians is a determinant of surgical outcomes | - | Social network analysis | Higher levels of teamwork are associated with significantly improved clinical outcomes, lower readmission rates, less emergency department visits, and lower mortality |
| Junker et al (2016)59 | Germany | Experiment (n = 7) | Consultation | Radiology / Urology | Evaluate the accuracy of PIC-MABP for locating suspicious prostate lesions when applied to mpMRI datasets | The PIC-MABP is a reliable system to enhance interdisciplinary communication of mpMRI findings between radiologist and urologist | Communication understanding | - |
| Landgren, Alawadi, Douma, Thomas, and Etchegaray (2016)60 | USA | Survey (n = 88) | Communication Speaking up | Pediatrics | Examine reasons reported by pediatric residents for not speaking up about safety events when they are observed in practice | Most common barrier to speaking up was a lack of interpersonal skills. Second most frequently reported reason for silence were related to safety of speaking up, including intimidation, fear of consequences and hierarchy concerns | Safety and team work culture | - |
| Shetty, Vaghasiya, Boddy, Byth, and Unwin (2016)61 | Australia | Survey (n = 40) | Consultation | Emergency medicine | Determine frequency and factors influencing perceived incivility during emergency department phone calls | Women were more likely to report perceived incivility. Consultation made to surgical specialties carried increased risk for incivility compared to medical specialties though not reaching statistical significance. Consultation with radiology for imaging requests were associated with the highest risk for incivility. | Grading consultation (positive, neutral, negative) | - |
| Chung, Jasien, and Maslow (2017)62 | USA | Pre- and posttest survey (n = 71) | Collaboration | Pediatrics / Internal medicine | Educational innovation to improve pediatrics and adult medicine residents’ interdisciplinary communication and collaboartion | Dyadic model with pediatrics and internal medicine for transition of patients with chronic medical illnessess, neurodevelopmental disorders and mental health conditions is well received | - | Dyadic model resulted in increased comfort in communicating with colleagues from other disciplines |
| Kapoor et al (2017)63 | USA | Pre- and post data analysis (n = 363) | Collaboration | Intensivists | Report the impact of collaboration between cardiologists and noncardiac intensivists on CICU outcomes | The implementation of a collaborative cardiologist-intensivist management model increases communication between cardiologists and noncardiac intensivists | - | Implementation of a mandatory medical intensivist consultation resulted in decreased mortality, increased 28-day ventilator free days, significant reduced length of stay and reduction of hospitalization charge |
| Matta, Nunez-Atahualpa, and West (2017)64 | USA | Call observation | Consultation | Radiology | Install a communication software that was customizable, to solve problems that radiologists encounter contacting other physicians | Implementing the software tool increased physicians satisfaction with radiologists; communication and availability | Satisfaction | - |
| Real, Fields-Elswick, and Bernard (2017)65 | USA | Survey / Assessment (n = 51) | Communication | Several | Explore whether mindful residents perform better than their peers as members of the health care team | Communication had overall robust relationships with mindfulness | Communication (openness, voice, feedback) | - |
| Afifi, Person, & Haddad (2018)66 | Israel | Pre- and post data analysis (n = 212) | Communication | Pathology / Surgery | Evaluate the impact of dialogue between surgeons and pathologists in lymph node evaluation | Initiation of a structured oncology service enhanced dialogue between surgeons and pathologists | - | The dialogue resulted in significant improved examination of lymph nodes, significantly improving the percentage of patients receiving adequate staging of their cancer |
| Bhatti, Brown, Kazerooni, & Davenport (2018)67 | USA | Survey (n = 188) | Communication | Radiology | Explore sentiments of radiology and referring provider residents with respect to the delivery and receipt of directly communicated radiology test results | Referring residents prefer direct communication of radiology results even for non-urgent unexpected findings, whereas radiology residents prefer less direct communication | ||
| Gonzalez et al (2018)68 | USA | Chart review (n = 1234) | Communication Handoff | Emergency / General Medicine | Develop and test a handoff communication tool and a standardized process for transitioning patients from emergency department to hospital inpatient service | Implementation of the developed handoff tool improved communication between specialties | Satisfaction with communication tool | Nonsignificant decrease in transfers to intensive care unit and number of rapid response team calls. Significant decrease in time to inpatient order. Satisfaction with the process improved confidence regarding accuracy and timeliness of information provided |
| Korbl, Wood, and Harvey (2018)69 | Australia | Survey (n = 262) | Consultation | Pathology | Assess the attitudes of pathologists, dermatologists, surgeons and general practitioners as to what circumstances warrant telephone contact in addition to standard written report | - | Communication frequency Communication preferences | - |
| Macaluso et al (2018)70 | Italy | Survey (n = 79) | Consultation | Pathology | Explore the interplay between clinicians and pathologists for the diagnosis and management of inflammatory bowel diseases in clinical practice in Italy | The presence of a specified pathologists was higher in high-volume center s compared to low-volume centers. Clinical trials are also more frequent in high-volume centers. | General interplay | - |
| Smith et al (2018)71 | USA | Pre- and post scoring (n = 110) | Handoff | Emergency / General Medicine | Evaluate impact of a structured communication strategy on the quality of admission handoffs | Introduction of standardized handoff process resulted in improvements in verbal handoff quality | Handoff content | Physicians perceive that higher quality handoffs will benefit patient care |
| Wetterauer et al (2019)72 | Switzerland | Experiment (n = 200) | Communication Consultation | Radiology | Investigate whether newly developed structured reports of prostate magnetic resonance imaging can improve interdisciplinary communication as compared to non-structured reports | Potential of improved communication between radiologist and urologist by the use of structured reports | Communication understanding | Communication with structured reports leads to fewer mistakes and lower re-consultation rate |
| Bowen et al (2020)73 | USA | Interview (n = 94) | Communication Handoff | Not specified | Clarify in what situations and for what reasons current physicians do or do not communicate with transferring physicians about transitioned patients for whom transferring physicians are no longer responsible | Barriers to communication were structures such as opposite work schedules and competing patient care priorities, relationship factors such as hierarchy and previous challenging experiences, lack of communication culture. Changing clinical decision or uncertainty are opportunities for learning, but only uncertainty was significantly associated with communication | Communication frequency | - |
| Lama, Hogg, and Olson (2020)74 | USA | Survey (n = 240) | Communication | Radiology | Compare and contrast the perceptions, experiences and other factors that influence communication behaviors about diagnostic errors between clinicians and radiologists | - | Communication frequency (diagnostic errors, feedback) | - |
| Noh et al (2020)75 | Korea | Chart review (n = 152) | Collaboration | Surgery | Compare postoperative sinonasal quality of life and olfactory function in patients who underwent endoscopic pituitary surgery by a neurosurgeon or by a collaborative team of surgeons | - | - | Postoperative subjective and objective olfactory function was better for patients where operation was performed by collaborative team of surgeons. Quality of life was not significantly different for both groups |
| Shaarani et al (2020)76 | Lebanon | Survey (n = 429) | Consultation | Not specified | Investigate the prevalence of WhatsApp use as an interprofessional communication tool among Lebanese physicians and explore the dimensions of its use | - | Frequency of using WhatsApp | - |
| Sheikh et al (2020)77 | USA | Survey (n = 64) | Communication | Pathology | Survey dermatologists on how well pathologists communicate with them to assess which aspects of pathologists’ communication skills are deemed most significant stratified by practice type | University affiliated dermatologists used electronic medical records more often to communicate with pathologists. Satisfaction with mode of communication was not different at a statistically significant level between different practice types | Satisfaction (communication, quality, completeness) | - |
| Mascia, Rinninella, Pennacchio, Cerrito, and Gasbarrini (2021)78 | Italy | Survey (n = 20) / Clinical data (n = 222) | Multidisciplinary team | Not specified | Describe patterns of face-to-face versus electronic-based communication networks and performance, measured as promptness of treatment implementation | Electronic communication tools, which are generally viewed as an efficient way to support knowledge exchange, can instead be detrimental, especially when tacit knowledge must be transferred in multidisciplinary teams | Frequency clustering | - |