[The contribution of nurses' caring approach to patient safety in a rehabilitation setting: an innovative study].

The specific contribution of caring to patient safety has not been explicitly clarified in previous studies, particularly in rehabilitation. Considering the particular needs of patients in rehabilitation, it seems that a caring approach could have an important role in their safety. Inspired by the Quality-Caring Model of Duffy and Hoskins (2003), the objective of this study, realized with twenty nurses who work in rehabilitation setting, was to understand the way their caring approach could contribute to their patients' safety. The findings, obtained from the semi-structured interviews performed within this qualitative phenomenological study, revealed that a caring approach leads to a beneficial transformation process not only for patients, but also for nurses and for the health care system, due to a positive feedback. This transformational process notably constitutes the particular contribution of a caring approach to physical, psychological and psychosocial patients' safety.