Trust towards nurses who care for haemodialysis patients: a cross-sectional study

Trust is widely acknowledged as the main component of relationships between patients and nurses.

Considering the importance of building trust in the patient-nurse relationship especially in vulnerable patients such as patients undergoing haemodialysis, this study was carried out to assess the trust of these patients towards nurses in the haemodialysis unit and to explore its relationship with some characteristics of the patients.

In this cross-sectional study, a total of 180 patients undergoing maintenance haemodialysis were selected using random sampling method. Data were collected by trust in nurses (TNS) scale. The collected data were analysed by SPSS (ver.21) software using anova, independent t-test and Pearson's correlation coefficient.

The mean score of patients' trust in nurses was 23.82, showing a high level of trust towards nurses. The lowest score (with a mean score of 4.17) was related to the providing of accurate information by nurses about the disease. Pearson's correlation coefficient indicated a positive significant relationship between the age and patient's trust (r = 0.17, p > 0.05), and there was a negative relationship between the mean score of trust and the mean of interdialytic weight gain (r = 0.57, p > 0.05).

Although the patient trust towards nurses was high in this study, there were some deficiencies in certain items especially in the provision of information and education to the patients. Education of specialised courses for nurses and empowering them to provide a high quality care to the patients on dialysis could help to increase the patents' trust.