The impact of primary nursing on patient satisfaction

Primary nursing is considered by some to be an appropriate vehicle for meeting the named-nurse standard of the Patient's Charter. The study reported here set out to determine whether patients identifying one nurse as being in charge of their care would express more positive experiences of and greater satisfaction with nursing care. Patients who could identify a nurse in charge of their care reported more positive experiences of that care. However, in the wards studied, primary nursing did not appear to be any more successful than team nursing in encouraging this process. Given the limited resources to implement primary nursing, the authors advise increased efforts to ensure each patient has one nurse responsible for their care, and that they know who this nurse is.