Cancer patient and staff perceptions of caring vs clinical care.
Two questions were investigated: (1) whether cancer patients (n = 72) and staff (n = 63) have different cognitive representations of the concepts 'caring' (in Swedish: omvårdnad) and 'clinical care' (in Swedish: vård), and (2) whether two different wordings of the response categories used by patients and staff to rank the perceived importance of 50 specific caring behaviors ('Old' response format: 'of importance'--of no importance vs 'New' format: more or less important') in relation to these concepts would produce different results. A Swedish questionnaire version of the CARE-Q instrument was used. Participants were randomized to one of four research conditions: (1) Caring/Old, (2) Caring/New, (3) Clinical care/Old, and (4) Clinical care/New, and asked to rank the importance of the 50 CARE-Q behaviors for that specific concept/response format combination. Results demonstrated that response formats did not affect patient or staff answers. Neither group did to any great extent value CARE-Q behaviors differently when regarded as examples of 'caring' vs 'clinical care'. The assumption that different cognitive representations of the concepts or that a specific wording of response categories had affected previous CARE-Q results was not substantiated.
Widmark-Petersson
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V
Centre for Caring Sciences, Uppsala University, Sweden.
von Essen
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L
Lindman
E
E
Sjödén
P O
PO
D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001294:Attitude to Health; D002983:Clinical Competence; D004645:Empathy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000451:nursing / Q000523:psychology*; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D009741:Nursing Staff, Hospital / Q000523:psychology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards