Abstract
Aim: It is important to understand the situation of quality of nursing care for patients with cancer. This study aimed at identifying elements that nurse managers perceived to need to monitor the quality of nursing care for patients with cancer in their hospital, and at identifying differences in their perceptions by nurse managers’ attributes and hospital characteristics.
Subjects and method: An internet survey was conducted from September to October 2021 among nurse managers at 849 hospital in Japan. After the literature review, 60 items were developed based Donabedian’s structure, process and outcome. We asked nurse managers about two points, the importance of understanding the situation at hospital for evaluating the quality of nursing care and its need for continuous monitoring, using a seven-points scale from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘not at all agree’. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to sort out similar items, and Mann-Whitney tests were conducted for differences in perceptions by respondent attributes and hospital characteristics.
Results: In total, 382 nurses answered the questionnaire. 279 responses were included for the analysis (valid response rate 32.9%). The elements that the nurse managers considered important to understand as the quality of nursing care for patients with cancer were ‘quality of life of the patient (median 6.20)’ and ‘compliance with patient safety procedures (6.20)’. Managers also perceived the necessity to monitor ‘nurse’ competencies and staffing (6.33)’ and ‘quality of life of the patients (6.20)’. Managers with more than 30 years of nursing experience more recognised the importance of ‘nursing care policy (p<0.05)’.
Conclusions: It is necessary to develop quality indicators for cancer nursing focusing on these elements, and to establish a system continuously monitor them.
