Nursing care satisfaction from school-aged children's perspective: an integrative review

Aim: This integrative review synthesizes the current knowledge on school-aged children's satisfaction with nursing care in acute care settings. Background: Children identify aspects of nursing care that are not valued by their parents. This fact confirms the relevance of properly assessing children's satisfaction. Design: An integrative review was performed. Data sources: A search for empirical studies was carried out in databases using the following search terms: satisfaction AND views OR opinions OR perceptions AND child AND nurs*. Review methods: The search was limited to full-text studies involving children from 6 to 12 years old, written in English or Portuguese, and published between 1 January 2000 and 31 August 2016. Twenty qualitative studies and three quantitative studies were included for revision and were analysed by two independent reviewers. Results: Three themes emerged: expectations of nursing care, experiences with care, and suggested strategies. Expectations and experiences allowed us to identify work within three main domains: personal domain (nurses' characteristics), professional domain (nurses' activities), and environmental domain (interaction between nurses and the environment). Conclusion: It is important to recognize children's rights to express their opinions about the nursing care they receive. Evaluation of both patients' and children's satisfaction should be systematically performed.