Patient satisfaction with nursing care: concept clarification.

Concept clarity is essential for instrument development and validity of research findings. The process of concept clarification can help rectify some of the issues in the measurement of patient satisfaction. This study presents a strategy, for concept clarification, for the purpose of refinement of an existing instrument for measuring patient satisfaction with nursing care in the hospital setting. The results of the exercise yielded a definition of patient satisfaction with nursing care, including a new framework, and provided guidance for rewarding two items, elimination of some items related to knowledge and skill of nurses, as well as generating new items not previously included in the original instrument.