Do caring behaviors in the quality caring model promote the human emotion of feeling cared for in hospitalized stroke patients and their families?

The aim of this study was to explore the discrete behaviors that comprise the human emotion of feeling cared for as described by hospitalized stroke patients and their families. Joanne Duffy's Quality Caring Model© (QCM) describes 8 caring behaviors supporting the experience of caring relationships exhibited during health care encounters. A secondary analysis of data from a guided interview was analyzed by 3 persons independently using general thematic content analysis and predetermined categories from the QCM, with final validation by the theorist. Percent agreement was 74.3% at first analysis, and 100% after secondary analysis. 82 of 100 phrases fit into at least one caring behavior, 17 phrases overlapped, and 18 phrases did not fit. Overlap between the caring behaviors is consistent with published quantitative reports. Patient experiences generating the emotion of "feeling cared for" may be formed from multiple caring behaviors enacted simultaneously by clinicians. Characteristics of clinicians, such as knowledge, may be as important as caring behaviors. Published by Elsevier Inc.