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Background: The utilization of patient experience surveying by health care institutions has become increasingly prevalent, yet its effectiveness in promoting quality improvement remains uncertain. To enhance the utility of patient feedback, the examination of free‐text comments may provide valuable insights to guide patient experience strategy. Aims: This study aims to explore the utility of free‐text comments and identify key differences for patient experience drivers between Net Promoter Score (NPS) subcategories of Detractors, Passives, and Promoters. Methods: Evaluation and classification of comments was conducted using the eight Picker Principles of Person Centred Care, with descriptive analysis of patient comments performed on the NPS data. Results: Analysis of patient NPS comments can be classified into three key drivers: "feeling well‐treated" (for Detractors), "feeling comfortable" (for Passives), and "feeling valued" (for Promoters). Specifically, Detractor comments provided the most comprehensive and detailed feedback to guide patient experience improvement activities. Conclusion: This study highlights differences between NPS subcategories, particularly regarding aspects of safety, comfort, and feeling valued. Comments from Detractor respondents may be especially useful for guiding quality improvements due to increased specificity and insights. These results also emphasize the essential nature of empathy and compassionate interactions between patients and clinicians to achieve the highest level of patient satisfaction and experience. Summary statement: What is already known about this topic? There is a large amount of patient experience data collected worldwide, including system‐level mandated metrics, such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) and the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey.Despite this, health care organizations may experience challenges with effectively analysing patient experience data and gathering insights from patient feedback.As such, there is an opportunity to improve the analysis of patient experience data—particularly qualitative data from patient comments—which may improve the understanding of patient experiences and identify key areas for health care improvement. What this paper adds? The study revealed significant differences in patient experience drivers among NPS subcategories (i.e., Detractors, Passives, and Promoters).These findings emphasize the importance of addressing patients' needs for safety, comfort, and feeling valued.Specifically, the Detractor comments offered rich insights for guiding health care improvement activities. The implications of this paper: The findings illustrate the importance of empathetic and compassionate interactions between patients and clinicians, which is essential to attain the highest levels of patient‐reported experience measures.This study may assist health care organizations to maximize the insights obtained from patient feedback and support development of a data‐driven patient experience strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accessible Summary: What is known about the subject?: Most nurses who work in mental health in Australia have completed a comprehensive nursing programme at a university. This training has been widely criticized and has not produced "job‐ready" graduates. Public inquiries into mental health services have highlighted the need for transformation of mental health services and concern about future nursing shortages. What the paper adds to existing knowledge?: This survey highlights what service users and supporters perceive are useful nursing skills and capabilities. The characteristics of helpful encounters with nurses are also described. What are the implications for practice?: Helpful nursing practice is aligned with traditional nursing values and theory, rather than the performance of specific tasks. Improving the retention of nurses to this specialty area of practice requires educational processes to enable nurses to enact values, develop their therapeutic potential and undertake facilitative and supportive practices which are helpful to service users. Introduction: Successive inquiries into mental health services in Australia have identified the need for major reform of services and proposed a return to direct‐entry nursing training. Aim/Question: To identify what service users, family and supporters have found helpful in their encounters with nurses in mental health settings. Method: A survey of 95 service users and supporters rated the importance of the capabilities and competencies of nurses. They also shared examples of helpful encounters with nurses which were subject to thematic analysis. Results: The most highly rated competencies were around demonstrating caring, empathy and understanding, and responding effectively in crisis situations. Helpful encounters involved enacted values, highly skilful interpersonal and psychotherapeutic engagement and practices that were facilitative and supportive. Discussion: The process and content of pre‐registration nursing training needs to refocus on the nurse meeting the needs of service users and supporters, rather than the instrumental needs of services today. Implications for Practice: Educational reform may be necessary but insufficient to address anticipated nursing workforce shortages. Policymakers and health service directors need to align services with mental health nursing values and promote practices aligned with what service users and their supporters report as helpful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: To explore the experiences of refugees who became registered nurses after arriving to Australia. Design: Qualitative description using a naturalistic inquiry framework. Methods: Between February 2018 and September 2019, the lead author conducted semi‐structured interviews with employed registered nurses (RNs) that are former refugees and English‐speaking. Interviews were 45–90 min' duration and digitally recorded. Participants provided voluntary informed consent and were sent questions beforehand. Data were collected and coded into themes. Rigor was achieved with multiple transcript readings by the research team to confirm common themes. Results: Twelve participants discussed their story. Three major themes were identified: (1) Milestone of being a refugee; (2) Milestone of resettling in Australia; (3) Milestone of becoming a RN. Conclusion: Each participant's story started at a place of disadvantage. They progressed successfully through the three milestones; despite living with traumatic experiences, they learned new skills, developed English literacy, became a RN and juggled the demands of life. This paper highlights the poorly understood pockets of the current Australian RN workforce. Impact statement: The nuanced stories of RNs with refugee backgrounds in this study move beyond trauma and struggle and demonstrate the important journey this particular group of health professionals undertake. Increasing the contextual knowledge of the complex lives of former refugees turned nursing professionals will raise public awareness of the diversity of life experiences of RNs working in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: The aim of this paper is to explore the perceptions, attitudes and beliefs of middle‐aged Australians around their health, lifestyle risks and chronic disease. Background: Health promotion and risk reduction are important to stem the rising prevalence of chronic disease. While there has been much emphasis on supporting these strategies in older Australians, there has been less attention on those in middle age. However, as this group age, their health will inevitably be impacted by lifestyle risk. Design: A qualitative descriptive study using semi‐structured interviews. Reporting was guided by the COREQ checklist. Methods: Thirty‐four participants aged 40–65 years were recruited across South Eastern New South Wales, Australia, using convenience sampling. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted by four registered nurses with qualitative research experience. Verbatim transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis. Results: Sixteen women and 18 men participated in the interviews. Four themes emerged, namely: adopting healthy lifestyles; denial; an impetus for change; and sustaining change. Perceptions about what constituted good health varied, with male participants being more ambivalent about their health. Impetus for change was mostly influenced by family history, awareness of health risks and identification of risks by health professionals. Participants found sustaining change challenging, particularly with regard to smoking cessation and dietary modifications. Conclusions: Understanding the perceptions of health of middle‐aged people is important and enables health professionals to engage in early behavioural change conversations that consider perceived barriers to lifestyle modification. Findings from this study emphasise the importance of discussions about lifestyle risk to reduce the future burden of chronic disease. Relevance to Clinical Practice: These findings illustrate the importance of understanding perceptions of health to guide primary health care nurses to develop person‐centred health promotion and chronic disease prevention strategies in this age group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objective: To capture the experiences of nurses in relation to the acutely physiologically deteriorating consumer. Background: Improving the physical health care of consumers with mental illness has been widely adopted as a priority for mental health nursing. Much of the effort thus far has focused on routine screening, prevention and treatment of common comorbidities including cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus and cancer. There has been less focus on the acutely physiologically deteriorating consumer in the mental health setting. Further study is warranted since this issue poses a set of highly complex challenges for nurses within the inpatient setting. Method: An exploratory, descriptive study was employed using focus groups to gather narrative data, which was then subject to qualitative analysis. Eleven mental health inpatient wards within a local health district in Sydney, Australia, were studied, comprising ward‐based nurses (n = 64) and nurse unit managers (n = 8). This paper follows the COREQ guidelines for reporting qualitative health research. Results: Qualitative data analysis revealed three themes central to the nurses' experience: (a) lack of clarity (subthemes: procedures and leadership accountability); (b) confidence in the workforce (subthemes: knowledge and skills, training needs, relevant experience, collaboration with emergency and medical teams, stigmatising attitudes); and (c) complexity (subthemes: complexity as the new norm and suitability of the mental health environment). Conclusion: The themes found in this study can be used to guide and inform healthcare policy, protocols, education and processes around building a more confident nurse workforce for the acutely physiologically deteriorating consumer. Relevance to clinical practice: Findings provide a rich data set for the generation of measurement tools and protocols to guide physical health care and evaluate performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: This paper seeks to explore general practice nurses' perceptions of interactional factors supporting communication with patients about lifestyle risk. Design: Qualitative descriptive study embedded in a concurrent mixed methods design. Methods: Fifteen Australian general practice nurses were interviewed following video‐recorded chronic disease management consultations between August 2017 ‐ March 2018. Results: The theme of 'Interactional Factors' comprised of the subthemes 'Relational factors' and 'Patient factors'. Relational factors referred to communication techniques and methods supporting temporal continuity with patients about lifestyle risk. Patient factors included consumers' motivation, willingness, and readiness to prioritize lifestyle changes. Lack of awareness of the nurses' role was perceived to have an impact on initiation of lifestyle risk conversations. Conclusion: Strategies optimizing continuity of nursing care enhance the capacity for lifestyle risk reduction conversations with patients. Ongoing training in patient‐centred communication and increasing patients' awareness of general practice nurses' roles would also better support these discussions. Impact: This research identifies ways the general practice nurses' role in supporting lifestyle risk reduction can be improved. Optimizing the general practice nurses' role in lifestyle risk communication can enhance the behaviour change and chronic disease management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and Objectives: To explore women's experiences of working shiftwork in nursing whilst caring for children. Background: In nursing, almost 90% of Australia's practising nurses and midwives are women. Much of the research undertaken in the shiftwork area uses men as their sample and uses a quantitative methodology to achieve results. Little work has been undertaken that explores the experience of women working shiftwork whilst raising children. Design: Heideggerian Hermeneutic Phenomenological Design. Methods: Semistructured interviews were conducted with ten women who cared for children about their experience of shiftwork. Each interview was digitally audio‐recorded. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed. The interpretation used first Heideggerian phenomenology as a lens and then second research on women's work and gender roles to resituate the experience in context. Reporting rigour has been demonstrated using the COREQ checklist. Results: Two major themes were derived from the data, Being Guilty and Being Juggler. Each is discussed in this paper. Conclusions: This study adds a qualitative voice to the substantial quantitative shiftwork body of literature. The themes uncovered in this study have thrown light on the nature of work done by women who are nurses, particularly the work related to their home and children. Relevance to Clinical Practice: There are opportunities to increase education around the importance of sleep and shiftwork self‐care in both preservice and new graduate education to assist nurses to ensure that sleep is a priority whilst working shiftwork. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives: This qualitative study explored the experiences of neonatal nurses with facilitating closeness between parents and babies with congenital abnormalities in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Background: Babies with congenital abnormalities often require admission to the neonatal intensive care unit. Parents may experience emotional distancing from their baby, due to their response to their baby's congenital abnormality, as well as physical separation due to their baby's hospitalisation in the NICU. NICU nurses can help facilitate the development of closeness between babies and parents in the NICU. Method: This qualitative interpretive description study involved face‐to‐face, semi‐structured interviews with twelve neonatal nurses following which the data collected were thematically analysed. The consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ) checklist were used in preparing this paper. Results: Three major themes emerged from the analysis—"Everyone copes differently," "You have to focus on what is the normal thing" and "It's very much an individualised approach." Participants often felt unprepared to care for babies with congenital abnormalities and implemented coping mechanisms to overcome the emotional labour they experienced. Skin‐to‐skin cuddles were considered the most beneficial strategy for parents to develop closeness with their baby. Participants recognised that they sometimes "pushed" parents into engaging with their baby. Participants highlighted the importance of individualised, supportive care for these parents. Conclusions: Neonatal nurses require increased education about congenital abnormalities and individualised care to support them in caring for babies with congenital abnormalities. Relevance to clinical practice: Further research is needed on parental experience of developing closeness with a baby with a congenital abnormality in the NICU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim This paper aims to explore women's experiences with healthcare providers to ascertain ways health care may be improved for women disrupted in their mothering. Background Women can find it difficult to relinquish care even when they are acutely unwell requiring hospitalization. Despite mothering being a priority for women, many healthcare professionals do not understand the importance of continuing to mother during maternal illness. Design This research used a qualitative methodology drawing on principles of feminism and storytelling. Methods Women's stories were collected through face-to-face interviews, email and via the telephone. The twenty-seven women who participated were from either Australia or the USA, had between one and six children and identified themselves as having been disrupted in their mothering by illness. Data were collected in 2011 and were analysed thematically. Findings The majority of participants had been hospitalized at some point in time for acute illness. A subset of participants reported feeling judged by nurses and that their efforts to continue to mother their newborn children despite their illness were misunderstood and not facilitated. Conclusion Findings from this study suggest that women are more likely to remember times that health professionals failed to understand the primacy that mothering held for them or facilitate their efforts to continue to mother despite illness. Nurses and midwives should regularly reflect on their personal values in regard to mothering, validate women's attempts to mother to the best of their ability during illness and find ways to support and empower women in their mothering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]