Cancer Patient and Staff Perceptions of Caring vs Clinical Care

Abstract

Two questions were investigated: (1) whether cancer patients (n = 72) and staff (n = 63) have different cognitive representations of the concepts 'caring' (in Swedish: omvårdnad) and 'clinical care' (in Swedish: vård), and (2) whether two different wordings of the response categories used by patients and staff to rank the perceived importance of 50 specific caring behaviors ('Old' response format: 'of importance'--of no importance vs 'New' format: more or less important') in relation to these concepts would produce different results. A Swedish questionnaire version of the CARE-Q instrument was used. Participants were randomized to one of four research conditions: (1) Caring/Old, (2) Caring/New, (3) Clinical care/Old, and (4) Clinical care/New, and asked to rank the importance of the 50 CARE-Q behaviors for that specific concept/response format combination. Results demonstrated that response formats did not affect patient or staff answers. Neither group did to any great extent value CARE-Q behaviors differently when regarded as examples of 'caring' vs 'clinical care'. The assumption that different cognitive representations of the concepts or that a specific wording of response categories had affected previous CARE-Q results was not substantiated.

Patients’ perceptions of quality of care at an emergency department and identification of areas for quality improvement

“…Maybe more RNs would have increased their possibilities to treat the patients with more empathy and commitment. Furthermore, RNs, as well as physicians should be more aware of the perspective of patients (Widmark‐Petersson et al. 1996, Höglund 1999, Hostutler et al.…”

“…To be able to improve care, nurses and physicians need objective information about patients’ perceptions of the care and must be aware of the patients’ attitudes (Höglund 1999). Two different Swedish studies (Widmark‐Petersson et al. 1996, von Essen & Sjödén 2003) have shown that nurses’ and physicians’ perceptions about what is good quality of care do not always agree with patients’ perceptions.…”

Oncology patients' and professional nurses' perceptions of important nurse caring behaviors

“…Also, Andrews et al highlighted this issue [24]. The results of Widmark-Petersson et al demonstrated that forced-choice vs. free-choice response formats did not affect patients' or nurses' answers [25]. …”

Comments on “The importance of nurse caring behaviours as perceived by Swedish hospital patients and nursing staff”

“…Urgent clarification of the concept of caring in a variety of professional domains (including nurse educators) was also requested for use in all future research within the field (Widmark-Petersson et al 1996. Larsson et al (1998) highlighted the need for further investigation of what makes patient-staff communication effective on the grounds that it may contribute to more effective staff assessment of patient perceptions.…”

“…The CARE-Q instrument included many but not all of these important caring behaviours suggesting 'a different pattern of findings' was obtainable 'when respondents are not forced to give priorities and rank their choices' (p 85). Widmark-Petersson et al (1996 further explored the adequacy of the CARE-Q instrument by considering the impact of different concepts, 'caring' and 'clinical care' on perceptions as well as the forced-choice and free-choice formats. Different concepts and response formats did not greatly affect patient and staff answers.…”