Quality and care: patients' perceptions.
Patients and health care professionals view quality nursing care from different perspectives. Health care professionals view competent nursing care as quality nursing care. Patients perceive quality nursing care as caring, interpersonal interactions. Institutions measure quality care through satisfaction surveys that exclude components of nurse caring behaviors. In three studies utilizing the Holistic Caring Inventory (HCI), patients perceived nurse caring behaviors and attitudes that indicated quality nursing care. The way to bridge the gap between institutions' and patients' perceptions of quality care lies in valuing the interactions that patients consider quality care and including these interactions in measures of quality care.
Department of Adult Health Nursing, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA.
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D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D002983:Clinical Competence / Q000592:standards; D004645:Empathy; D005260:Female; D018939:Holistic Nursing; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D009732:Nursing Care / Q000523:psychology / Q000592:standards*; D015403:Nursing Evaluation Research; D009738:Nursing Service, Hospital / Q000592:standards*; D016522:Oncology Service, Hospital / Q000592:standards; D017060:Patient Satisfaction / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D015144:Southeastern United States