Purpose: Patient-centered care is a core role of nurses for providing high-quality care to patients. The purposes of this study were to understand the relationship between empathy, health literacy competencies, nurse-physician collaboration, and patie...
Purpose: Patient-centered care is a core role of nurses for providing high-quality care to patients. The purposes of this study were to understand the relationship between empathy, health literacy competencies, nurse-physician collaboration, and patient-centered care among nurses, and to identify factors affecting patient centered care.
Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted with 129 nurses working at a university hospital. Data were collected using a structured self-report questionnaire that included items on general characteristics, empathy, health literacy competencies, nurse-physician collaboration, and patient-centered nursing. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-tests, ANOVA, Mann-Whitney U tests, Kruskal-Wallis H tests, Pearson correlation analyses, and multiple regression analysis.
Results: There were statistically significant positive relationship between empathy, health literacy competencies, nurse-physician collaboration and patient-centered care. The regression model for this study explained 55% of variance of patient-centered care among nurses, Moreover, factors influencing patient-centered care among nurses were idnetified as nurse- physician collaboration, health literacy competencies, working in an emergency department, and experience with patient-centered care education.
Conclusion: This study identified that nurses’ health literacy competencies and nurse–physician collaboration were important factor to explain patient-centered care among nurses. Interprofessional collaboration programs should be emphasized for nursing education and continuing education to improve patient-centered care. Moreover, nurses’ health literacy competencies need to be developed to improve patient-centered care.
Keywords: patient-centered care, empathy, health literacy, physician-nurse relations