Thesis advisor: Judith A. Vessey / This undergraduate thesis explores the underlying problem of interprofessional conflict and the resulting poor communication between physicians and nurses. It establishes the importance of understanding and addressing this subject within the health care community on a basis of reported negative outcomes, including compromised patient safety and quality of care. It also proposes a preventive health model as the most effective approach to describing the problem. An exploration of the antecedents to this interprofessional conflict identifies gender identity as having a significant role in setting the stage for the kind of relationships between nurses and physicians that harbor tension. Gender roles are discussed in the context of the developing professional identities of both physicians and nurses. The discussion further identifies how these social and professional distinctions result in the imposition of hierarchical arrangements that give way to oppressive relationships. The analysis proposes a need for dialogue –a form of primary prevention- regarding the oppressive internalized sexism that appears to have resulted from this hierarchical evolution. / Thesis (BS) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. Connell School of Nursing. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Patient centred collaborative practice between nurses and physicians is currently being promoted worldwide. There is increasing evidence that post licensure interprofessional educational interventions improve patient outcomes but similar evidence for pre-licensure interprofessional learning is lacking. The impact of contemporary nursing and medical education on graduates’ ability to collaborate in the workplace is also unclear. To address this gap, an interview based qualitative study underpinned by hermeneutic phenomenology and informed by the theoretical lens of social identity was designed. Eleven junior registered nurses and eleven junior residents from a single healthcare jurisdiction each, in Canada and the United Kingdom (UK) were interviewed to explore how the processes that lead to socialization, professional identification and identity formation in professional schools are perceived to influence collaborative teamwork upon graduation. Data were as analyzed through iterative naive and thematic interpretations aligned with the hermeneutic process, to arrive at a comprehensive understanding. The impact of contemporary undergraduate nursing and medical education on the ability to practice collaboratively was found to be obfuscated by internal contradictions and overshadowed by the contingencies and demands of the workplace, during residency and early nursing practice in both locations. In medical schools, the intense socialization described in literature was replaced by individual reflection and a struggle to maintain work-life balance. Values internalized were of a sense of responsibility and hard work. Students espoused an attitude of collaboration but lacked training in enabling competencies and practical application. Exposure to interprofessional learning and its impact was variable and inconsistent and formal assertions of collaboration were not consistently modeled by faculty. In nursing schools, the value of caring, self-awareness and assertiveness was promoted. Training for collaboration with physicians was largely transactional and teaching about the status of the nurse vis-à-vis the physician was mired in contradictions. Residents and the nurses could not rely on their experience of professional school as they transited to the workplace. Initiation was frequently precipitous and contingencies of the workplace determined how they acted. For residents the community of clinical practice was fluid and repeatedly new. Both residents and nurses were overwhelmed by unpreparedness, workload, and responsibility and acted to get by and get the job done. Residents learned to preface doing the best for the patient and not compromising patient care, while nurses became proficient at routine tasks and found fulfilment as the patient’s advocate. There was a propensity for conflict when uniprofessional roles and values collided. In busy wards each group had interdependent but competing priorities which lead to adversarial expressions of uniprofessional identity and consequent derogatory out-group stereotyping. In contrast situations demanding urgent focused attention, such as a cardiac arrest, lead to the spontaneous formation of a collaborative team which briefly expressed an interprofessional identity. Complex cross-generational and gender based interactions were sometimes adversarial and provoked resentment. Consequently junior nurses retreated to derive fulfilment as the patient`s advocate while residents looked forward to collaborating with other health professionals on their own terms, in the future. Neither contemporary professional education nor the hospital environment sustained consistent collaborative practice. / Graduate