CATCHING MY WAVELENGTH - PERCEPTIONS OF THE EXCELLENT NURSE

The purpose of this article is to describe essential characteristics o f an excellent nurse as perceived by women with breast cancer. A descr iptive-exploratory research design was used, and 10 Danish women who h ad breast cancer surgery and treatment more than one year previously a nd who were still in secondary treatment but not hospitalized particip ated in semistructured interviews. Four main concepts were identified: The excellent nurse was perceived as competent, compassionate, courag eous, and concordant. Concordance was more important to the subjects t han expected and was described as directly related to their perception of an excellent nurse and excellence in nursing.