title: Barriers to nurse-patient communication in cardiac surgery wards: a qualitative study.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  An appropriate and effective nurse-patient communication is of the most important aspect of caring. The formation and continuation of such a relationship depends on various factors such as the conditions and context of communication and a mutual understanding between the two. A review of the literature shows that little research is carried out on identification of such barriers in hospital wards between the patients and the healthcare staff.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The present study was therefore conducted to explore the experiences of nurses and patients on communication barriers in hospital cardiac surgery wards.
  
  
  METHODS
  This qualitative research was carried out using a content analysis method (Graneheim & Lundman, 2004). The participants were selected by a purposeful sampling and consist of 10 nurses and 11 patients from the cardiac surgery wards of three teaching hospitals in Tehran, Iran. Data was gathered by unstructured interviews. All interviews were audio-taped and transcribed verbatim.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Findings were emerged in three main themes including job dissatisfaction (with the sub-themes of workload tension and decreased motivation), routine-centered care (with the sub-themes of habitual interventions, routinized and technical interventions, and objective supervision), and distrust in competency of nurses (with the sub-themes of cultural contrast, less responsible nurses, and their apathy towards the patients).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Compared to other studies, our findings identified different types of communication barriers depending on the nursing settings. These findings can be used by the ward clinical nursing managers at cardiac surgery wards to improve the quality of nursing care.
authors.affiliation: . vidashafipour@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Vida
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Shafipour
authors.forename: Eesa
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mohammad
authors.forename: Fazlollah
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ahmadi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D006348:Cardiac Surgical Procedures / Q000451:nursing*; D003144:Communication Barriers; D005260:Female; D006784:Hospitals, Teaching; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D007492:Iran; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D036301:Qualitative Research