The primary purpose of this article is to discuss the development and testing of a scale designed to examine nurses' caring behaviours. A pilot study was conducted with a convenience sample (n = 81) of 42 nurses (providers) and 39 patients (consumers). The setting was two community hospitals in the New England Region. The respondents were able to assign a rank of the items (nurses' caring behaviours) with a spread of mean values from 3.5 to 16.7. There was agreement on the most caring behaviour, 'The nurses treat me as an individual', on the behaviour in the middle range of caring, 'The nurses comfort me by their silent presence', and on the least caring behaviour, 'The nurses did not talk about how my illness might affect my life'. The Wilcoxon two-sample rank-sum test was used to test the difference in rank of the 20 items between the providers and the consumers. There was a significant difference between the providers and the consumers in the ranking of nine of the 20 items. The consumers valued behaviours that recognized their individual perspective as well as that of their family and behaviours that helped them anticipate and prepare for change. The providers placed a greater emphasis on the behaviours that were more geared towards the comforting aspects of care by encouraging patients to express and vent their feelings. These findings allow clinicians to be sensitized to their caring behaviours by increasing their realization of how behaviours are perceived by patients. The instrument needs minor revision and then further testing is indicated.

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Neonatal intensive care units have continually grown in number and complexity in their short history. The care given to infants and families in these units is done, in large part, by nursing. This article discusses the development of a scale that will explore the perceptions of this care by both consumers and providers. The perceptions of each group will be compared to determine if care that is thought and intended to be caring for providers is indeed perceived as such by consumers. This is of significant importance to the developing body of knowledge related to caring in nursing, and it will also promote care that is family centered.

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Facilitating global learning for students of nursing presents unique challenges. In this paper, the authors describe a study abroad/away program for faculty and students. This experience is part of the students’ plan of study within their 4-year curriculum. The infrastructures needed to initiate the program and lay the foundation for building, implementing, and maintaining the experiences are defined. Students’ blogs are shared in order to illustrate caring nursing practice. Projected plans for future activities and the evaluative dimension are discussed.