Authors: Vigdis Abrahamsen Grøndahl, RNT, Doctoral Student, Department of Nursing, Karlstad University, Karlstad, Sweden and Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health and Social Studies, Østfold University College, Fredrikstad, Norway; Ingela Karlsson, PhD, RN, Senior Lecturer, Department of Nursing, Karlstad University; Marie Louise Hall-Lord, PhD, RNT, Professor, Department of Nursing, Karlstad University, Karlstad, Sweden and Gjøvik University College, Gjøvik, Norway; Jari Appelgren, Lic, Lecturer, Department of Economics and Statistics, Karlstad University; Bodil Wilde-Larsson, PhD, RNT, Professor, Department of Nursing, Karlstad University, Karlstad, Sweden and Professor, Department of Nursing, Hedmark University College, Elverum, Norway.
Aims and objectives. To describe patients' perceptions of quality of care and to explore combinations of person-related and external objective care conditions as potential predictors of these perceptions. Background. Several studies have examined various single factors of person-related and external objective care conditions in relation to quality of care. None of these has included the effect of over-occupancy on patients' perception of quality of care. Furthermore, little is known about how combinations of different factors are related to each other and to the perception of quality of care using multivariate analysis. Design. A cross-sectional design. Method. A total of 528 patients (83·7%) from 12 medical, surgical or medical-surgical wards in five hospitals in Norway participated. Perceptions of quality of care and person-related conditions were measured with the 'Quality from Patient's Perspective' instrument. Data on external objective care conditions was collected from ward statistics provided by head nurses. Multivariate general linear modelling was used (p