Quality of nursing documentation and clinical reasoning competence: The mediating role of interprofessional collaboration

Introduction High quality nursing documentation and clinical reasoning competence are essential for safe and effective nursing practice, and interprofessional collaboration represents a key care process. This study examined the relationships among nurses’ quality of nursing documentation, interprofessional collaboration, and clinical reasoning competence. Methods A cross-sectional, descriptive, correlational, quantitative study was conducted among nurses working in multiple hospitals in Hue, Vietnam. Participants were recruited using convenience sampling. Data were collected from March to July 2025 using online and paper-based questionnaires. The Nurses Clinical Reasoning Scale, Interprofessional Collaboration Scale, and the Student Survey on Writing Nursing Care Plans were used. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and mediation analyses were performed. Results A total of 239 nurses were included in the final analysis. Correlation analysis showed that the quality of nursing documentation was positively associated with interprofessional collaboration (p < 0.001) and clinical reasoning competence (p < 0.001), and interprofessional collaboration was positively correlated with clinical reasoning competence (p < 0.001). Interprofessional collaboration significantly mediated the relationship between quality of nursing documentation and clinical reasoning competence (indirect effect β = 0.02, 95% CI [0.01, 0.04]), accounting for 11.5% of the total effect. Conclusion Interprofessional collaboration partially mediated the relationship between quality of nursing documentation and clinical reasoning competence, indicating that high-quality documentation enhances clinical reasoning both directly and indirectly through improved collaborative practice. These findings highlight the importance of strengthening documentation practices and interprofessional collaboration to support nurses’ clinical reasoning competence.