QUALITY AND CARE - PATIENTS PERCEPTIONS

Patients and health care professionals view quality nursing care from different perspectives. health care professionals view competent nursi ng care as quality nursing care. Patients perceive quality nursing car e as caring, interpersonal interactions. Institutions measure quality care through satisfaction surveys that exclude components of nurse car ing behaviors. In three studies utilizing the Holistic Caring Inventor y (HCI), patients perceived nurse caring behaviors and attitudes that indicated quality nursing care. The way to bridge the gap between inst itutions' and patients' perceptions of quality care lies in valuing th e interactions that patients consider quality care and including these interactions in measures of quality care, Key words: measures of qual ity care, patients' perceptions of caring satisfaction.