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Quality nursing care: a qualitative enquiry
Author(s) -
Hogston Richard
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
journal of advanced nursing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.948
H-Index - 155
eISSN - 1365-2648
pISSN - 0309-2402
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2648.1995.21010116.x
Subject(s) - quality (philosophy) , nursing , outcome (game theory) , qualitative research , process (computing) , work (physics) , grounded theory , psychology , nursing outcomes classification , nursing theory , perception , nursing care , control (management) , medicine , nursing research , medline , team nursing , sociology , political science , computer science , social science , epistemology , philosophy , mathematics , mathematical economics , artificial intelligence , law , engineering , operating system , mechanical engineering , neuroscience
In spite of the wealth of literature on quality nursing care, a disparity exists in defining quality The purpose of this study was an attempt to seek out practising nurses' perceptions of quality nursing care and to present a definition of quality as described by nurses Eighteen nurses from a large hospital in the south of England were interviewed Qualitative analysis based on a modified grounded theory approach revealed three categories described as ‘structure, process’ and ‘outcome’ This supports previous work on evaluating quality care but postulates that structure, process and outcome could also be used as a mechanism for defining quality The categories are defined by using the words of the informants in order to explain the essential attributes of quality nursing care The findings demonstrate how more informants cited quality in terms of process and outcome than structure It is speculated that the significance of this rests with the fact that nurses have direct control over process and outcome whereas the political and economic climate in which nurses work is beyond their control and decisions over structure lie with their managers