title: Role perception and role enactment of the nurse and their determinants in a teaching hospital in Nigeria.
abstract: This study was conducted to compare nurses' perception of their role with the perception which physicians and patients have of the role of nurses in a teaching hospital incorporating a school of nursing and midwifery; to explore the underlying reasons for the discrepancies found; to examine the effects of discrepancies in role perception on the effectiveness of patient care and to discuss the findings in the light of nursing education curricula in Nigeria. Questionnaires, listing ten technical/instrumental and expressive/humanitarian nursing functions were administered to three groups of respondents (nurses, physicians and patients). They were requested to select any five statements that best described what nurses did, and to rank them according to how often the functions described were seen being practised. A second questionnaire, administered only to the nurse respondents, elicited a number of background parameters related to nursing career. The results from the first questionnaire show that nurses did not seem to agree with patients and physicians on the perception and enactment of their role. Nurses saw their role as equally technical/instrumental and expressive/humanitarian, whereas patients and physicians saw it as more expressive/humanitarian, the patients being particularly more inclined to this perception. Most significant was the disagreement between patients and nurses. Nurses whose perception of their role agreed most closely with that of physicians and patients, were found to be older, and to have had longer experience. A significant proportion of them had only basic nursing qualifications, and they perceived their functions to be more appreciated by patients.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003479:Curriculum; D004506:Education, Nursing; D006784:Hospitals, Teaching; D006801:Humans; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D009549:Nigeria; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D009732:Nursing Care; D009741:Nursing Staff, Hospital / Q000523:psychology*; D010465:Perception; D010820:Physicians / Q000523:psychology; D012380:Role; D012649:Self Concept; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires