Never Assume: The Search for Shared Descriptions of Quality Nursing Care

What is quality nursing care? How do we as nurse leaders ensure that our organizations consistently deliver quality nursing care? Our organizations craft policies and guidelines to meet quality standards and use national and local outcome metrics to show the quality of that care both internally and to the public. These measures seldom identify specifics that might offer the chief nursing officer and the bedside nurse insight into how to directly influence the quality of nursing care delivered as perceived by the nurse and the patient at the point of care. The bedside perspectives of both the nurse and the patient seem to be the key to setting clear expectations about nursing care that may create consensual understanding of the quality of nursing care. The purpose of this article is to present the findings of a study designed to identify common themes that could be used to identify a definition of quality nursing care that has shared meaning for both nurses and patients. Incorporating these findings into a care delivery model could enhance patient engagement in care and optimize the patient's care experience by clarifying patient expectations about quality nursing care.