Quality nursing care in the words of nurses.
OBJECTIVE
This paper is a report of a study of the meaning of quality nursing care for practising nurses.


BACKGROUND
Healthcare quality continues to be a subject of intense criticism and debate. Although quality nursing care is vital to patient outcomes and safety, meaningful improvements have been disturbingly slow. Analysis of quality care literature reveals that practising nurses are rarely involved in developing or defining improvement programs for quality nursing care. Therefore, two major study premises were that quality nursing care must be meaningful and relevant to nurses and that uncovering their meaning of quality nursing care could facilitate more effective improvement approaches.


METHODS
Using van Manen's hermeneutic phenomenology, meaning was revealed through analysis of interviews to answer the research question 'What is the lived meaning of quality nursing care for practising nurses?' Twelve nurses practising on medical or surgical adult units at general or intermediate levels of care within acute care hospitals in the United States of America were interviewed. Emerging themes were discovered through empirical and reflective analysis of audiotapes and transcripts. The data were collected in 2008.


RESULTS
The revealed lived meaning of quality nursing care for practising nurses was meeting human needs through caring, empathetic, respectful interactions within which responsibility, intentionality and advocacy form an essential, integral foundation.


CONCLUSIONS
Nurse managers could develop strategies that support nurses better in identifying and delivering quality nursing care reflective of responsibility, caring, intentionality, empathy, respect and advocacy. Nurse educators could modify education curricula to model and teach students the intrinsic qualities identified within these meanings of quality nursing care.
Burhans
Linda Maas
LM
North Carolina Board of Nursing and Adjunct Faculty, East Carolina University College of Nursing, Wilson, NC, USA. linda.burhans@gmail.com
Alligood
Martha Raile
MR
D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D019300:Medical Errors / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008875:Middle Aged; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations / Q000941:ethics; D009732:Nursing Care / Q000592:standards*; D015404:Nursing Methodology Research; D009741:Nursing Staff, Hospital / Q000523:psychology* / Q000592:standards; D010687:Philosophy, Nursing; D036301:Qualitative Research; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D017751:Safety Management