Comparing professional and patient outcomes for the same episode of care

Following an acute hospital admission, patients' perceptions of the acceptability of their own outcomes were compared with professionally derived outcomes of care developed for the same patients by nurses. Professional opinion was obtained from the Nursing Practice--Casemix and Outcomes Project undertaken by the Sydney Metropolitan Teaching Hospitals Nursing Consortium, where patient outcomes were classified by nurses into three groups: Outcomes Acceptable; Outcomes Not Acceptable but Justified and Outcomes Not Acceptable and Not Justified. Fifteen male patients in the present study discussed their outcomes following recent orthopaedic surgery at a series of focus groups organised according to the three outcome categories. Findings from the study showed the majority of patients were satisfied with their outcomes. Patient agreement with nurses regarding the acceptability of outcomes was highest for patients from the Outcomes Acceptable group and lowest for those from the Outcomes Not Acceptable and Not Justified group. This work is significant in that it is one of the first nursing studies to compare outcomes developed by practitioners for a particular group of patients with actual outcomes experienced by the same group of patients.