Quality of Nursing Documentation and its Effect on Continuity of patients’ care

Abstract

Background: Nursing documentation is defined as the record of nursing care that is planned and given to individual patients and clients by qualified nurses or other caregivers under the control of a qualified nurse. Purpose of the study: Assess the relation between quality of nursing documentation system and the continuity of patient care at Tanta university hospitals. Study design: Descriptive correlational design was utilized to conduct this study. Study setting: The study was conducted at Tanta University Hospitals affiliated to Ministry of Health. Study sample: A convenient sample of 80 nurse supervisors and simple random sample of 80 staff nurses in intensive care units. Data collection instruments: Data was collected using two instruments adapted by the investigator. The first instrument was a quality of nursing documentation questionnaires. The second instrument was Auditing continuity of patient care checklist. Results: The present study showed that the most of studied samples resulted in accepted level of nursing documentation quality and the majority of total studied samples resulted in average level of continuity of patient care. Conclusion: There was a highly statistically significant positive correlation between quality of nursing documentation and continuity of patient care. Recommendations: Encourage nurses to comply with standard of nursing documentation at intensive care units.