title: The 'expert' nurse comforter: perceptions of medical/surgical patients.
abstract: An interpretative study of Australian adult medical-surgical patients' experiences and perceptions of comfort and discomfort in hospital uncovered a number of themes. One theme, patients' perceptions of and experiences with nurses they called 'good' or 'expert', is the subject of this paper. Informants provided brief vignettes of 'expert' nurses and glimpses of skilled nursing that depicted nurses as important sources of comfort and well-being. Nurses who 'knew what they were doing' in intensive care units and in high-dependency, medical-surgical, postnatal and short-stay wards were reassuring, caring and 'expert'. Informants' descriptions of expert nursing are briefly compared with descriptions found in the professional nursing literature. Because nursing work is poorly understood and because it is immensely comforting for patients to know that nurses are both competent and caring, nursing comfort and safety work deserve to have a higher profile in the public perception of nursing.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical, Surgical and Paediatric Nursing, Faculty of Nursing and Health Studies, University of Western Sydney Nepean, New South Wales, Australia. a.walker@nepean.uws.edu.au
authors.forename: A C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Walker
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002983:Clinical Competence / Q000592:standards*; D004645:Empathy; D006801:Humans; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D009732:Nursing Care / Q000523:psychology*; D015404:Nursing Methodology Research; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D010361:Patients / Q000523:psychology*