A multicenter survey of patients’ favorite type of nursing care and associated factors in Hebei Province, China

BACKGROUND: Nursing care service is an important part of the healthcare system; however, patients’ favorite type of nursing care remains unknown. This study aims to investigate inpatients’ and nurses’ favorite types of nursing care and identify nurses’ learning needs. METHOD: The study selected a province-representative sample of inpatients and nurses using a stratified random sampling method from 18 selected hospitals, including 9 Level Ⅱ hospitals and 9 Level Ⅲ hospitals in 9 cities of Hebei province. All participants were personally interviewed about their favorite type of nursing care. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was applied to analyze the potential associations between favorite nursing care and factors about inpatients and nurses. RESULTS: Data from 3,642 inpatients and 371 nurses were included for the final analysis during this survey. Among inpatients, the proportions who selected good attitude-centered, good nursing skill-centered, good environment-centered and good health education guidance-centered as their favorite types of nursing care were 49.9%, 31.8%, 5.8%, and 12.5%, respectively. Concurrently, among nurses, the proportions were 49.9%, 29.6%, 19.1%, and 1.3%, respectively. Multivariate analysis showed that most patients selected good attitude-centered nursing care as their favorite type of nursing care. However, patients who did not live with guardians and had more than one hospitalization per year were more likely to select other nursing care types. CONCLUSION: Attitude-centered nursing care service was the favorite type of nursing care for most inpatients and nurses. Health education guidance was another main concern of inpatients. The main factors affecting the patients’ choice of favorite nursing care included patients’ living status and the number of hospitalization events per year. Nursing education should focus on nurse attitude as well as on health education guidance.