Perception and Experiences of Nurses Regarding Patients Involvement in Health Care Decisions: An Integrative Review

Nurses as key healthcare professionals, have an important role in delivering high quality care, which requires positive perception, adequate knowledge and skills of implementing proper patients' involvement in all health care aspects. Considering nurses' perception and experiences, patients' involvement may improve health outcomes. This integrative review aims to assess the perception and experiences of nurses regarding patients' involvement (PI) in health care decisions as reflected in the literature. EBSCO, Science direct, Google Scholar, PubMed, Medline and Jordanian database were searched utilizing PRISMA flow chart to search related studies from 2007 up to 2017. Quality and characteristics of all studies were critically evaluated utilizing specific criteria called the Checklist for Assessing the Quality of Studies (Kmet, Lee, & Cook, 2004). In total, eight relevant studies were included with 3037 nurses as study participants. The qualitative approach was the dominant approach used, with an average quality assessment of (16/20). The included studies were conducted in Europe, Canada, Australia and Asia. The conclusion derived from the review is that most nurses have positive perceptions of the importance of patients' involvement, yet they inadequately reflected that in their clinical practices. Cultural shift through educational interventions is required to change negative attitudes among diverse groups of nurses toward patients' involvement.