Omitted nursing care and its reasons in a public institution in the province of Chubut, Argentina

Abstract

Background: Patient care is the core of the nursing profession, which can be defined as: an activity that requires personal and professional values to preserve, restore and care for life from the nursing-patient relationship.Aim: to describe the prevalence and reasons for the omission of nursing care, according to the perception of the nursing staff of a hospital in the province of Chubut in Argentina.Methods: Descriptive, cross-sectional observational study conducted with 76 nursing professionals. Data were collected using the MISSCARE instrument.Results: 76 nursing professionals participated in the study, 75% were female, with a median age of 40.5 years (IIQ: 36), mean 41.02 (SD: 7.6), ranging from 29 to 60 years. Nursing care that obtained the highest prevalences of omission were participation in the interdisciplinary team discussion of patient care, if present (75.0 %), walking three times a day or as prescribed (61.8 %), sitting the patient out of bed (52.6 %), requests for administration of prescribed medications Y/N are attended within fifteen minutes.Conclusions: This study highlighted the fact that omission of care is a real and frequent phenomenon. The most frequent reasons for omission of nursing care were related to human resources and material resources. These reasons are centered on managerial and systemic failures, which should be analyzed and corrected in favor of patient safety.

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