Discrepancy between Patients' Perspectives, Staff's Documentation and Reflections on Basic Nursing Care

Abstract

In recent years, Denmark has witnessed an increasing written and oral debate concerning the quality of basic nursing care. The present study is an attempt to characterize basic nursing care in a Danish hospital by collecting data on patient perceptions of their main somatic problems in seven pre-set categories. These data include documentation of patient problems in corresponding problem categories, and the staff's additional knowledge about patient problems. Triangulation of methods was used. Data were collected on 120 patients and from 22 nurses. The patients had 2.3 problems on average: pain (58%) and sleep (43%) were the problems cited most frequently. Only 31% of patients' experienced problems were documented in the nursing records. The nursing staff had more knowledge than was registered in the nursing records. However, one-third of the patients' problems was totally unknown to the nursing staff. From the patients' point of view, essential aspects of basic nursing care are overlooked in daily clinical practice. The findings show that the method employed is suitable for integration of the patients' perspective.

Patients’ and nurses’ perceptions of nursing problems in an acute care setting

“…RNs and patients stated the same level of importance of attending to problems 44% of the time. In sharp contrast, other studies have reported RNs’ recognition of patient‐perceived problems with 70% agreement or better (Adamsen & Tewes 2000, Hansen et al. 2002).…”

“…Nurses and patients in somatic settings have been found to hold different opinions about the presence of nursing problems (Farrell 1991, Adamsen & Tewes 2000). In general, nurses overestimated their patients’ nursing problems, with emotional problems being overestimated more often than physical ones (Farrell 1991, Löfmark et al.…”

Health-care professionals' documentation of wellbeing in patients following open heart surgery: a content analysis of medical records

“…Documentation of expressions of decreased wellbeing perceived by HCPs in their communication with patients is an important piece of the puzzle, as it forms a basis both for decisions and for understanding the patient's overall health situation (Adamsen & Tewes , Langewitz et al . ).…”

Drug-related problems in patients with angina pectoris, type 2 diabetes and asthma – interviewing patients at home

“…Numerous pieces of research have suggested that the patient's perspective should be an important prerequisite for describing and prioritizing the patient counselling practices of health professionals [5][6][7][8][9][10][11], the reason being that patients' perspectives on illness and medicine use often differ from those of health professionals [8,[12][13][14][15][16][17].…”