Effect of caring behaviour approach to improve nurses’ caring character in medical-surgical wards

Abstract

Introduction: Nurses are the leading line of professional healthcare. Many studies of caring include factors that are influential or related, but there has been no intervention to improve the caring character of nurses. The purpose was to prove the effect of the caring behaviour approach on the improvement of nurses’ caring character. Methods: This study used a quasi-experimental design. The sample size of 100 nurses working in medical-surgical wards of four hospitals in Gresik City was separated into 50 nurses in intervention group and 50 nurses control group by cluster sampling. The inclusion criteria: nurses implementing caring for patients. The caring behaviour approach was given to nurses in the intervention group and nurses in the control group performed their usual care as regulation in nursing care of each hospital. Caring behaviour approach was modification of education and mentoring about Islamic caring and caring behaviour nurses to patients and family. Data collection of nurses’ caring character variable used Caring Behaviour Inventory, consisting of: deference to others, assurance of human presence, positive connectedness, professional knowledge-skills, and attentiveness to others’ experience. Data analysis used paired t-test and independent t-test at significant level α ≤ 0.05. Results: Nurses between intervention group and control group had similar demographical data in gender and nursing education. Caring behaviour approach had significant influence to improve the nurses’ caring character. There were significant differences of nurses’ caring character between the two groups. Conclusions: Nurses’ caring character should be supervised regularly to assess the performance of nurses, to improve also maintain good caring behaviour.