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Caring in community nursing practice: Inductive content analysis reveals an inter‐dynamic system between patients and nurses
Author(s) -
Yue Peng,
Xu Tianmeng,
Greene Brian,
Wang Yongli,
Wang Rongjin,
Dai Guizhi,
Xu Lijie
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of clinical nursing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.94
H-Index - 102
eISSN - 1365-2702
pISSN - 0962-1067
DOI - 10.1111/jocn.15312
Subject(s) - nursing , content analysis , checklist , community health , medicine , nurse education , qualitative research , psychological intervention , meaning (existential) , quality (philosophy) , psychology , public health , sociology , social science , philosophy , epistemology , psychotherapist , cognitive psychology
Aims and objectives To examine the understanding of caring in the practice of community nursing from the perspectives of patients and nurses. Background An increasing population of patients with chronic disease has produced a need for humanistic caring in communities. As a result, caring has become a core value of community nursing professionals. However, community nurses meet many difficulties in trying to practice person‐centred care with their clients. Furthermore, most community nurses—especially in China—lack systematic education and training about caring because the practical meaning of caring in community practice is unknown. Design The qualitative study described herein employed inductive content analysis. Methods Eleven community patients with chronic disease and fifteen community nurses who were nominated as a caring nurse from different community clinics in Beijing, China, participated in thirty‐one interviews during January to August in 2018. Nine documents from the interviewed nurses were collected. Both interview data and documents were analysed using strategies of inductive content analysis. The COREQ checklist was used. Results Patients and their corresponding nurses described a wide range of caring experiences that were generalised into 28 concepts. Caring emerged as an inter‐dynamic system that comprised the foundation and quality of a caring relationship, the caring philosophy and behaviours of interactions, and positive feedback from caring interactions. A relationship‐based framework of caring in community nursing practice was constructed. Conclusions Identifying this systematic concept of caring provides insights that are applicable to the creation of targeted management, education and practice interventions to ultimately enhance the quality of community health care—in China or elsewhere. Relevance to clinical practice The systematic understanding of caring in community nursing practice will inform nurses in community health clinics, their educators and their managers on how to provide care to community patients and how to develop caring competence for community nurses.