Nurses' perception of missed nursing care in a Western Australian teaching hospital: A cross-sectional study

Background: Missed nursing care (MNC) has gained increasing emphasis in nursing literature because of its association with nurse and patient outcomes in healthcare settings. While missed care has been widely studied, little evidence is available on the types and frequency of missed care, reasons for its occurrence, and predictors of missed care in Western Australia.Aims: To determine nurses' perceptions of the types of MNC, reasons for missed care and to identify factors predicting missed care occurrence in Western Australian acute care settings.Methods: A cross-sectional study in medical and surgical wards was performed. The nurse MISSCARE survey tool was used to capture self-reported types and reasons for missed care and level of nurse job satisfaction from a sample of 204 nurses working in 16 acute care wards. Data analyses were carried out in International Business Machines Corperation located in Armonk, New York United States (IBM SPSS Statistics) (v 29).Findings: The most common perceived missed activities included ambulation (87%), patient teaching (79%), interdisciplinary conference attendance (78%), mouth care (78%), intake and output (77%), and patient turning (75%). Labour resources ranked highest for reasons for missed care followed by material resources and communication. Significant relationships were observed between missed care and job satisfaction, role satisfaction, and teamwork. Discussion: Working overtime, job dissatisfaction, inadequate staffing, and heavy admissions and discharges were related to increased likelihood for missed care occurrence.Conclusion: Although further studies examining the link between MNC and staffing methodologies are needed, this study provides evidence on nurse-reported missed care and the impact of missed care in Western Australia.& COPY; 2023 Australian College of Nursing Ltd. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).