Discrepancy between patients' perspectives, staff's documentation and reflections on basic nursing care

In recent years, Denmark has witnessed an increasing written and oral debat e concerning the quality of basic nursing care. The present study is an att empt to characterize basic nursing care in a Danish hospital by collecting data on patient perceptions of their main somatic problems in seven pre-set categories. These data include documentation of patient problems in corres ponding problem categories. and the staffs additional knowledge about patie nt problems. Triangulation of methods was used. Data were collected on 120 patients and from 22 nurses. The patients had 2.3 problems on average: pain (58%) and sleep (43%) were the problems cited most frequently. Only 31% of patients' experienced problems were documented in the nursing records. The nursing staff had more knowledge than was registered in the nursing record s. However, one-third of the patients' problems was totally unknown to the nursing staff. From the patients' point of view, essential aspects of basic nursing care are overlooked in daily clinical practice. The findings show that the method employed is suitable for integration of the patients' persp ective.