Communication climate and patient care: causes and effects of nurses' attitudes to patients.

This article deals with the effects to be expected from improvements in the communication among nurses on the ward. It is often assumed that both nurses and patients would profit from these improvements. The patients would experience fewer problems during their stay on the ward. However, the empirical data from a study in Dutch hospitals indicates that there is little reason to be optimistic about the effects on patients. Research findings show that hardly any link was found between the communication climate on the ward and the nurses' attitudes to patients. A clear link was found, however, between the extent to which the nurses experienced problems with the physicians and the hospital management, and the extent to which they had a negative attitude to the patients (problem shifting). In the last section, some consequences of the findings for the improvement of patient care are discussed.