"Nurses comprise a central component of service delivery in hospitals that have far-reaching effects throughout the health care industry." (Numerof, 1983, p. 157)
The current nursing shortage is a dual-edged sword that has implications for employee stress as well as for patient outcomes and health care costs. Over 90% of the nation's hospitals are recruiting medical/surgical nurses and more than 50% are recruiting nurses for intensive care unit vacancies. Indeed, the shortage has created additional stress, such as work overload and poor working shifts that has compounded problems within the nursing profession. One potentially important avenue in seeking solutions for this growing problem is the exploration of effective communication between and among nurses. Research in acute care facilities attests to the importance of co-worker communication for outcomes in acute care settings. In an investigation of over 5,000 patients across the United States, it was found that intensive care teams displaying effective coordination (communication) had significantly lower patient death rates after controlling for size of hospital, diagnosis, and other mediating variables,
Based on these results, the key question becomes: what is effective communication for co-workers? One answer to this question may be found in the area of social support. The intuitive appeal of supportive communication perhaps has its origins in human needs for nurturance and existence. The importance of supportive relationships in infancy has been well documented and it is likely that a need for these relationships continues throughout adulthood. For example, social support has been associated with psychological well-being as well as physical health.
Within an organizational context, the literature on social support and organizational outcomes has generally focused on the effects of network integration on burnout and job satisfaction. For example, in a study of child welfare workers, integration in organizational networks was significantly related to decreases in burnout...................
