Nurses’ and patients’ viewpoints regarding quality of nursing care in the teaching hospitals of Semnan University of Medical Sciences, 2009

  Introduction: Nursing care is an essential component of health services. Patient's health and improvement depends on the quality of nursing care. Nurses and patients views as well as their active participation for making decision have an important role in quality of services, so it must be regarded as a principle. The purpose of this research was to study nurses' and patients' viewpoints regarding quality of nursing care in teaching hospital of Semnan (Iran).   Materials and Methods: In this descriptive-comparative study, 52 nurses and 300 patients from internal, surgical, gynecology and pediatric wards of Fatemieh and Amir Hospitals were selected by systematic sampling. Nursing care quality was assessed in psychotic, social and communicative aspects using a Quality Patient Care Scale questioner. The questioner had 41 questions with 3 answer choices (rarely, occasionally and usually) that marked from 1 to 3. Mean scores were calculated for all subjects and then were categorized in undesirable (less than 1.5), low desirable (1.5-2.49) and desirable (2.5-5) groups.   Results: 31.6 % of patients and 92.6% of nurses evaluated psychotic-social aspect of care quality as desirable. The desirability percent for communicative aspect of care quality was 24.7% in patients and 56.8% in nurses. There was a significant statistical difference between patients and nurses views in both aspects (P