Nurses' Perceptions of Caring at Work: Qualitative Findings

The study objective was to identify qualitative themes of nurse perceptions of self, coworker, and leadership caring.

Although caring is an important and valuable component of nursing practice and a healthy nurse work environment, nurse perceptions of behaviors that exemplify caring in the work environment have not been extensively studied.

Qualitative content analysis conducted with data retrieved from responses to open-ended questions from the Watson Caritas Self-rating Score, Watson Caritas Co-Workers Score, and Watson Caritas Leader Score.

Five primary themes were identified: 1) what matters most in a caring work environment; 2) what harms the caring work environment; 3) togetherness as a team; 4) pandemic impact on the caring work environment; and 5) distress emerging from unmet expectations.

Nurses reported positive and negative exemplars of caring that can be used to provide lessons for leaders to emulate caring behaviors and promote healthy, caring work environments.