[Analysis of the concept of care/caring-structure of attributes identified from qualitative and quantitative...

The concept of care/caring has been recognized as the central component of nursing in the United States of America since the 1980s. Although caring is the essence and the central focus of clinical nursing, the term has several meanings, and there is no consensus regarding its definition. The concept of care/caring should be examined not only from the nurse's perspective, but also from the patient's perspective. The purpose of this research is to identify the common characteristics of the concept of care/caring from both the patient's and nurse's perspectives, and to clarify the structure of the concept of care/caring in the English articles. Thirty qualitative research papers written by 21 authors and 17 quantitative research papers written by 9 authors were sampled. From the analysis of the 47 articles, 5 categories and 13 sub-categories were identified as attributes of care/caring. The 5 categories were 1) Characteristics of Nurse, 2) Nursing Activities, 3) Patient-Nurse Relationship, 4) Caring Outcomes, and 5) Others. As the next stage of the research, the concept of care/caring in Japanese nursing should be analyzed. It must be determined whether the concept of care/caring is also the central component of nursing in Japan and if so can these identified characteristics of the concept be applied to the concept of care/caring in Japanese nursing.