“…The nobon of quality care within nursing compnsing a coUecbon of atbtudes and beliefs, underpinned by a substanbal Icnowledge base, is to be found throughout the literature Van Maanen (1981) states how it is difficult to define quality of care because the essence of nursing care IS underpinned by individual assessment of the pabent's needs Subsequently, quality of care is determined by the knowledge and skills of the nurse's assessment In order to deliver high quality care, the nurse must be able to perform effecbvely and must be competent in the applicabon of theory and skill m the climcal situation This requires possession of the necessary knowledge as well as mastery m psychomotor, cognibve and affective skills (Fitzpatnck et al 1992), the former reflecting the why and what of care and the latter reflecbng the how (Reilly 1978) Quality in nursing Masso (1989) postulates that a distmguishmg feature of quality care is that it has two dimensions, providers and clients, and suggests that quality of care is dependent on these two vanables In other words, nurses and pabents have different views about what consbtutes quality of care For Altschul (1982), nurses are somebmes puzzled because patients appear to be sabsfied with their care, when nurses can readily identify shortcomings From this standpoint it would appear evident that quality is a term depictmg favour to those people who judge it Quality of care thus becomes a subjecbve phenomenon because it means different thmgs to different people, pabents and nurses alike In summary, it can be seen that quality care is a complex but excibng phenomenon The word itself is subject to a mulbphcity of mterpretabons which make it difficult to define precisely It is evident that the nature of quality m nursmg involves such issues as competence and skill through the accountable pracbce of professional nurses There is also an element of subjecbvity because of the personal nature of quality which means different thmgs to different people This research was an attempt at describing this complex phenomenon by analysmg nurses' percepbons…”