Physician-nurse perceptions of styles of power usage∗

An attempt was made to see whether physician order-giving comprised a major area of conflict with nurses. A group of physicians and nurses at a metropolitan hospital in Los Angeles was asked to use the semantic differential to assign meanings to two hypothetical situations wherein a physician tried to influence a nurse and a patient, respectively. Results indicate that, for each of the methods of influence for which their mean scores were significantly different, either the direction of meaning was the same for both groups, or the nurses—as influencees or observers of M.D. influence—had only a ‘slight’ response to the method. The conclusion is that physician power-usage—in the institution studied—is not an apparent source of conflict with nurses.