Assessment of Barriers of Nurse-Patient Effective Communication in Emergency Department of Lahore General Hospital, Lahore

Abstract

Background: Nurse–patient communication in emergency departments may be constrained by clinical demands and interpersonal difficulties. Local assessment can identify perceived barriers. Objective: To identify nurse-perceived barriers to effective communication in the Emergency Department of Lahore General Hospital, Lahore, Pakistan. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study included 124 registered nurses recruited through convenience sampling. Participants completed the self-administered 27-item Barriers in Communication Questionnaire, covering demographic, knowledge-related, environmental, social, economic, and psychological domains using five-point response scales. Frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations were calculated using IBM SPSS Statistics version 26.0. Results: All participants were female. Barriers most frequently rated to a large or very great extent were lack of time (n = 108; 87.1%), overworking (n = 104; 83.9%), and nursing shortages (n = 99; 79.8%). Multiple simultaneous duties were endorsed by 95 nurses (76.6%), inadequate psychological support for patients by 89 (71.8%), and inadequate knowledge of communication skills by 88 (71.0%). Conclusion: Nurses perceived environmental and workload-related difficulties as the leading barriers, alongside communication-knowledge and psychological-support concerns. These findings identify priorities for local assessment without establishing actual communication failure or effects on patient outcomes