| Abstract: | Caring represents the core of nursing, and while it is closely related to nursing care it predominately encompasses the relationship nurses have, or develop, towards the patients. Both the concept of caring and the concept of missed nursing care have been evolving in parallel with the professionalization of nurses' work, the growing scope of their competences and the transfer of certain therapeutic and diagnostic procedures from doctors to nurses, which on the one hand implies an increased scope of work while on the other hand it poses a risk for an increased frequency and severity of health care errors caused by nurses. The purpose of the master’s thesis is to present the concepts of caring and missed nursing care and to determine the relationship between the two in practice.
Research methodology. Descriptive method were used. For both concepts, the content analysis covered a total of 44 bibliometric units, of which 33 fell onto the concept of caring and 11 fell onto the concept of missed nursing care. In the review and selection of literature, the following electronic data sources were used: CINAHL, MEDLINE, PubMed, ProQuest Social Science Journals, SAGE, SCI, SSCI and Science Direct. With the concept of caring, we conducted a search using the keywords "care", "caring" and "nursing" and combinations thereof, and with the concept of missed nursing care, we searched using the keyword "MISSCARE" and the phrase "missed nursing care". For measuring the concept of care, we used the CARE-Q Scale (translated into Slovenian), and for measuring the concept of missed nursing care, we used the tool MISSCARE-Survey (also translated into Slovenian). The quantitative research method was used in the empirical part. We enrolled subjects into our research using the snowball method. We collected data with the Fluidsurveys Ultra web tool; the data was then exported as an .xls file, imported into the SPSS PASW 19 software and statistically analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics.
Results. We find that a moderate and already significant statistical correlation (r=0.415; p<0.01) exists between the concepts of caring and missed nursing care, which in practice means that higher levels of caring provided by nurses and health technicians translate into lower levels of omitted nursing care. We did not, however, find a connection between reasons for missed nursing care and either the concept of caring or individual caring behaviours. In concepts of caring and missed nursing care, we did not find statistically significant differences related to age, gender or the professional role of subjects.
Conclusion. Through our research, we have identified the most important caring behaviours in nurses and health technicians, the nursing care activities that are most often missed, and the reasons for missed nursing care. We find that the results obtained for both concepts are comparable with the results of research we had analysed in the theoretical part of our research. |
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