Physician–nurse collaboration is essential for realizing the team approach to health care. The current status of this collaboration must be examined from the viewpoints of both physicians and nurses. The present study, part of a larger study, aimed to translate the Jefferson Scale of Attitudes toward Physician–Nurse Collaboration （JSAPNC）, developed by Hojat et al. （1999）, into Japanese and to assess the attitudes of physicians and nurses toward collaboration in Japanese hospitals.
1）A self–administered questionnaire survey was distributed to 520 physicians and 2139 nurses at 4 hospitals in 4 prefectures, and valid responses were received from 51.0％ of physicians and 76.2％ of nurses.
2）Factor analysis revealed that the factorial structure of the Japanese version of the JSAPNC was different from that of the original version. The Cronbach’s alphas of the scale were 0.79 for total scores and 0.5 to 0.7 for subscales.
3）The total score on the JSAPNC was higher for nurses than for physicians. No demographic characteristics of physicians were correlated with their total scores on the JSAPNC. In contrast, nurses’ age, length of clinical experience, qualifications, position, and affiliation were correlated with their total scores on the JSAPNC.
4）The total score on the JSAPNC could be used to compare the attitudes towards collaboration of physicians and nurses between Japan and other countries. The results show that the total score on the JSAPNC of our subjects in Japan was lower than those in previous studies in other countries. Education for facilitating and evaluating collaboration is needed.
5）Further investigation of factors related to physicians’ attitude toward collaboration is required. For nurses, it is necessary to investigate factors related to their attitude in combination with organizational factors.