Nursing care at night: an evaluation using the Night Nursing Care Instrument.
BACKGROUND
Night nurses carry overall nursing responsibility for approximately half the time that patients spend in hospital. However, there is a paucity of literature that focuses on nursing care provided at night.


OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study was to evaluate nursing care provided at night from the perspective of both nurses and patients.


METHODS
The study, which had an evaluative and a comparative design, was carried out using the Night Nursing Care Instrument at a hospital in southern Sweden. Nurses (n = 178) on night duty were consecutively selected, while the patients (n = 356) were selected by convenience sampling.


RESULTS
The results showed a statistically significant difference between nurses' assessments and patients' perceptions of the nursing care provided at night in nursing interventions (P < 0.0001). In the areas of medical interventions and evaluation, no statistically significant differences were found between nurses and patients. For eight of 11 items, patients reported that they were satisfied (> or =80%) with the nursing care provided at night.


CONCLUSIONS
These findings suggest that night nurses need to improve their ability to assess patients' needs for nursing care at night. A first step in this direction is for them to become aware of how patients perceive night nursing. As a second step, nurses need to increase their knowledge of which nursing actions promote patients' rest at night.
Oléni
Magnus
M
School of Social and Health Sciences, Halmstad University, Halmstad, Sweden. magnus.oleni@lthalland.se
Johansson
Peter
P
Fridlund
Bengt
B
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007297:Inpatients / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009551:Night Care / Q000592:standards*; D009732:Nursing Care / Q000592:standards*; D015403:Nursing Evaluation Research / Q000379:methods; D009741:Nursing Staff, Hospital / Q000523:psychology*; D017060:Patient Satisfaction / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013548:Sweden