Cooperation within physician-nurse team in occupational medicine service in Poland - Knowledge about professional activities performed by the team-partner.

BACKGROUND: The goal of the study has been to learn about physicians' and nurses' awareness of the professional activities that are being performed by their colleague in the physician-nurse team.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: Postal questionnaires were sent out to occupational physicians and nurses in Poland. The analysis includes responses from 232 pairs of physician-nurse teams.

RESULTS: The knowledge among occupational professionals about tasks performed by their colleagues in the physician-nurse team seems to be poor. Respondents were asked about who performs tasks from each of 21 groups mentioned in the Occupational Medicine Service Act. In the case of only 3 out of 21 groups of tasks, the rate of non-consistence in answers was lower than 30%. A specified number of professionals performed their tasks on the individual basis. Although in many cases their team colleagues knew about those activities, there was a major proportion of those who had no awareness of such actions.

CONCLUSIONS: Polish occupational physicians and nurses perform a variety of tasks. Occupational nurses, besides medical role, also play important organizational roles in their units. The cooperation between the two professional groups is, however, slightly disturbed by the deficits in communication. This issue needs to be improved for the betterment of operations within the whole system.