Abstract
Background: Only a few studies have investigated the association between hospital characteristics and breast cancer patients' satisfaction with nursing staff.
Objective: The aim of this study was to determine whether the satisfaction of newly diagnosed breast cancer patients with nursing staff correlates with hospital characteristics after taking the relevant patient characteristics into account.
Methods: Multilevel regression analysis was applied, combining survey data from newly diagnosed breast cancer patients regarding their characteristics and satisfaction with nursing staff with data on the characteristics of the hospitals in which the patients were treated.
Results: Data from 2945 patients from 81 hospitals were analyzed in multilevel logistic regression models. The patients were significantly more likely to be satisfied with the nursing staff in hospitals that employed breast care nurses (BCNs) at the time of the survey. At the patient level, patients were significantly more likely to be satisfied with nursing staff if the patients were native speakers and rated their own health more highly. Cross-level interaction analysis suggested that the increased patient satisfaction with nursing staff that resulted from employing BCNs was largely limited to native German-speaking patients.
Conclusions: The results demonstrate that patient satisfaction with nursing staff is higher if BCNs are employed in the treatment hospital. However, only the satisfaction of native speakers was significantly higher when BCNs were employed.
Implications for Practice: These findings suggest that hospitals should invest in employing specialist nurses. Special attention should be paid to the care of non-native-speaking patients.