Patients’ Perceptions of Nurse Caring Behaviors in an Emergency Department

The purpose of this study was to (a) determine which caring behaviors of the nurse do patients’ perceive as being the most and the least important, (b) examine patients’ perceptions of nurse caring behaviors in relationship to their age and perception of illness; and (c) compare and contrast responses between patients and parents of children who are patients. Data for this questionnaire (N = 59) were collected over a two-month period at a not-for-profit, teaching hospital, which specializes in the care of women and children in an Appalachian state located in the southeastern United States. The Caring Behaviors Assessment instrument is a 63-item questionnaire and used a Likert-type summation scale. An additional three qualitative questions were asked to correlate data with patients’ age range, perception of severity of illness, and whether or not the person completing the survey was a patient or a parent of a patient. Analysis of data was completed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The results of this study revealed Human Needs Assistance as the most important subscale and this correlates with the results of other similar studies using the CBA tool. The results of the study also revealed, “being kind and considerate” as the single most important behavior by the nurse to indicate a sense of caring by the patient or parent of a patient. This finding is mirrored in other studies as the most important behavior; however, “being kind and considerate” is found in the top ten lists of most important single items in other studies using the CBA tool