A Study to Measure the Quality of Nursing Care in a Medical Ward at Selected Hospital

Health care organization has changed and grown. Quality of care is being recognized as a right rather than privilege. Measuring quality of care in the hospital has become very important aspect in evaluating health care services. Thus, it is very important to measure patients perception of Quality of nursing care in a medical ward. A descriptive cross sectional study was conducted and a total of 250 patients recruited for the study by using purposive sampling technique. Patients satisfaction with nursing care quality (PSNCQQ) questionnaire was used to measure the patients perception of quality of nursing care after obtaining reliability. The results revealed that nearly half of the patients (43.2 %) were between the age group of 41-60 years. The mean and standard deviation of patients perception of overall quality of nursing care was 62.63 9.57. Most of the patients perceived overall quality of nursing care was good whereas 54 patients (21.6 %) and 26 patients (10.4 %) had perceived low quality in the aspect of provision of information and in skill and competency, respectively. Thus, it was concluded that nurses need to update knowledge and improve skill and competency by attending Continuing education and skill training programmes.