unfinished nursing care, PIRNCA, hospital, nurses, survey

Objectives: The aim of the study was to investigate and compare unfinished nursing care in selected European countries. Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was performed to investigate the unfinished nursing care in four selected central European countries. Unfinished nursing care was assessed using the PIRNCA (Perceived Implicit Rationing of Nursing Care) questionnaire, an inventory of 31 nursing activities (Jones, 2014). Nurses were asked to rate how often they were unable to complete each of the 31 activities for patients on their previous seven shifts: “never” = 1, “rarely” = 2, “sometimes” = 3, “often” = 4 (Van Fosson, 2017). The research sample included 1353 nurses from four European countries (Croatia, Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia). Results: Mean item scores of the 31 items of PIRNCA in the total sample ranged from 1.13 to 1.92. The lowest overall PIRNCA score has the Czech sample (1.28), the highest overal PIRNCA score has the Croatian sample (1.76). Significant differences in all 31 elements of the PIRNCA as well as in the overall mean score have been found between countries. Slovak and Czech nurses reported less unfinished care than Polish and Croatian nurses (p = 0.000). The care interventions most frequently unfinished were identified as follows: emotional or psychological support to a patient or family; timely response to requests; patient teaching; and important conversation with another member of a patient’s multidisciplinary team. Discussion: This is the first multinational study investigating and comparing the prevalence of unfinished nursing care across Central European countries using PIRNCA questionnare. The research results confirmed high prevalence of unfinished nursing care in four selected European countries what is in congurence with results of other multinational quantitative studies (Ausserhofer et al., 2014; Blackman et al., 2018). The results also point to certain aspects of nursing care which are more frequently left