Patient Participation Determined by Nurses’ Attitudes Toward Caring

Abstract

Patient participation has gained widespread recognition as one measure of quality care that nurses provide. In the literature, participation has been defined as patients being involved in the decision making process concerning the delivery and evaluation of their own care. Practicing nurses are of the view that paltients should participate, so that they can experience positive outcomes such as greater satisfaction with care and decreased vulnerability. Despite this view, there is literature to show that nurses do not always invite patients to participate, resulting in patient dissatisfaction. One category that emerged from a grounded theory study of patient participation, involving 33 nurses and 32 patients from acute care hospitals, has found that nurses’ attitudes toward caring determined whether they invited patients to participate in their care. This in turn affected the degree to which patients were satisfied with their care. This paper presents and discuses the findings of this one category.