This study is significant because of its evidence-base and demonstrates how the participatory action research process empowered nurses to make sustainable changes to their practice. The nurses in the study wanted to affect change. The planned change was not dictated by management, but was driven by the clinical nursing staff at the 'grass roots' level. Therefore, being involved in the decision-making process provided an incentive to actively implement change.

This paper demonstrates the value of participatory action research (PAR) and promotes its use by nurses in clinical practice. PAR has gained popularity in nursing and health-care research, offering a way of developing practice-based knowledge that can improve nursing care. PAR is described in detail: what PAR is, how to use PAR in clinical practice, and the steps in the PAR cycle as applied during an exemplar study in which nurses used PAR to address their concerns and develop, implement and evaluate a model of care in an acute medical ward. The authors advocate PAR as a collaborative means to improve the nursing care for patients in varied clinical practice settings.

This article reports on a study designed to determine whether demographic characteristics of patients such as age, gender and cultural background were associated with different perceptions of the importance of and satisfaction with various aspects of nursing care. In addition, patients, their family/carer and nurses from wards specializing in aged care were compared with general medical wards to determine if there were differences in these perceptions. Results demonstrated that patients who were older (aged > 80 years), female and from aged care wards perceived that physical aspects of nursing care were more important than did patients who were younger (aged 65-80 years), male and from medical wards. Older patients and those from aged care wards were more satisfied with physical care. Nurses need to be aware of these differences and focus on physical aspects of care to ensure patient satisfaction better health outcomes.

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