Aim To evaluate patients’ satisfaction with the quality of nursing care and examine associated factors. Design A cross‐sectional, descriptive survey study. Methods The sample was composed of 635 patients discharged from a private hospital. Data were collected using “Patient Satisfaction with Nursing Care Quality Questionnaire” with a total of 19 items, and a questionnaire designed to record socio‐demographic characteristics and medical histories between January 1–May 31, 2015. Results Patients were more satisfied with the “Concern and Caring by Nurses” and less satisfied with the “Information You Were Given.” Patients (63.9%) described nursing care offered during hospitalization as excellent. Patients who were 18–35 years old, married, college or university graduates, treated at the surgery and obstetrics–gynaecology units, and patients who stated their health as excellent and hospitalized once or at least five times were more satisfied with the nursing care. According to this study, the nurses needed to show greater amount of interest to the information‐giving process.

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Undertaking a health-related course at university can facilitate an awareness of health-promoting lifestyles. We carried out a descriptive and cross-sectional study with 1616 university students in Istanbul, Turkey. Students from the nursing schools were compared to those from the schools of social sciences using a Turkish version of the Health-promoting Lifestyle Profile (HPLP) II after a validation study. The nursing students had more positive health-promoting lifestyles than those of the non-nursing students. Furthermore, fourth-year nursing students had higher scores in most of the subscales of the HPLP II than did the students from the lower years; conversely, the fourth-year non-nursing students had lower scores. The sociodemographic variables, self-perceived health status, relations with family and friends, and self-perceived academic performance were associated with the HPLP. The implications are discussed for the curricula and on-campus facilities that focus on health promotion activities.

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Using Piper's Integrated Fatigue Model, this research project was planned to determine the level of fatigue experienced by Turkish women with breast cancer undergoing adjuvant chemotherapy, to discover the factors affecting fatigue, and to provide a reference by means of which an effective nursing care for such patients could be planned. In assessing the level of fatigue and factors affecting it, a patient information form, the Piper Fatigue Scale, and the Rotterdam Symptom Checklist were used. The reliability tests performed afterwards showed that the scales are appropriate tools for use in Turkish women with breast cancer. Before treatment, psychological symptoms' distress was higher than physical symptoms' distress. However, following treatment, the latter was found to be closer to the former. When pretreatment and posttreatment physical and psychological symptoms were compared, it was noticed that fatigue, nausea, anorexia, vomiting, constipation, depression, and loss of hope for the future were among the symptoms observed to increase the most in the posttreatment period. Different from the other studies, we determined that all of the patients experienced fatigue 7 to 10 days after the chemotherapy cycle and the sensory/affective fatigue scores were high. Breast cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy experienced a moderate level of fatigue, which was influenced by level of income, stage of disease, and symptoms related to chemotherapy, showing compliance with similar studies. Following up patients individually and keeping the treatment-related symptoms under control were noticed to help prevent fatigue.

To prevent infections or complications during intensive care treatment, it is important for nurses working in critical care units to develop and implement oral care assessments and evidence-based oral care protocols.

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In order to investigate the effect of kefir consumption on mucositis induced by 5-FU based chemotherapy (CT), we monitored the systemic immune response by measurement of the serum proinflammatory cytokine levels and we evaluated the anti-microbial effect of kefir with an agar diffusion method. Forty patients with colorectal cancer were included in this randomized prospective study. On the first 5 days of each CT cycle, the study group received oral lavage with kefir and then swallowed 250 ml of kefir while control group received oral lavage with 0.09% NaCl twice a day. Before and after every cycle of CT, the oral mucosa was assessed. Serum proinflammatory cytokine levels were evaluated before the initiation and after the third and the sixth cycle. Kefir was administered in 99 out of 205 courses. Mucositis developed in 27.3% of the courses given with kefir administration and in 21.7% of the courses given with 0.9% NaCl oral rinses. The difference between the two groups was not statistically significant (p > 0.05). When we compared the serum proinflammatory cytokine levels of the two groups at the baseline and following the third and the sixth cycles, we again found no statistically significant difference (p > 0.05). Kefir consumption at the mentioned doses made no statistically significant effect on serum proinflammatory cytokine levels and on the incidence of mucositis development in cancer patients. Under in vitro conditions, kefir inhibits only Staphylococcus epidermidis.