Oncology patients' and nurses' perceptions of caring.

The concept of caring is central to the practice of nursing. Recent focus on patient-centred care highlights the importance of viewing caring from the patient's perspective. A comparative descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted to determine if there was a difference in oncology patients' and nurses' perceptions of caring. The Caring Behaviors Inventory-Elders (CBI-E) directly derived from Watson's Theory of Human Caring was administered to patients and nurses from in-patient medical-surgical units. This paper reports on a subset of 19 patients and 15 nurses from the oncology unit. There were significant differences between patients' and nurses' perceptions on overall caring and on several individual behaviours. In order to provide true patient-centred care, innovative approaches to addressing these differences are needed.