Association Between Intensive Care Nurses' Self-Reported Caring Behaviours and Observed Care Quality: A Single-Centre...

Caring behaviours are a core component of nursing practice and are assumed to influence care quality, particularly in intensive care settings where patients require continuous and complex care.

This study aimed to explore whether intensive care nurses' self-reported caring behaviours are reflected in observation-based nursing care quality within a team-based intensive care environment.

This single-centre, prospective, observational study was conducted between 10 October 2025 and 30 January 2026 in the adult intensive care unit of a tertiary-level state hospital in Türkiye. The sample included 30 intensive care nurses and 60 patients under their care. Data were collected using the Caring Behaviours Inventory-24 (CBI-24) and the Turkish version of the Nursing Care Quality Scale for Intensive Care Units. Spearman correlation analysis was used to examine the relationship between caring behaviour and care quality scores. Group comparisons were conducted using appropriate parametric and non-parametric tests (Student's t-test, Welch test, Mann-Whitney U, Kruskal-Wallis H).

No statistically significant relationship was found between total nursing care quality scores and total caring behaviour scores or their subdimensions (ρ = 0.075, p = 0.696). Nurses who voluntarily chose to work in intensive care had significantly higher caring behaviour scores (p = 0.022), whereas care quality scores did not differ.

No significant association was found between perceived caring behaviours and observation-based nursing care quality. The findings suggest that observation-based nursing care quality in intensive care settings may not directly reflect nurses' self-perceived caring behaviours.