Unfinished nursing care and its relationship to level of teamwork

Design: A descriptive cross-sectional study.

Methods: The study was conducted between November 2022 and January 2023. Data collection was carried out using a set of questionnaires that involved the Unfinished Nursing Care Survey tool to measure UNC and the Nursing Teamwork Survey (NTS) to investigate level of teamwork. The sample consisted of 159 postgraduate nursing students from five public universities in different regions of the Slovak Republic.

Results: The mean composite score of UNC was 2.41 (SD = 0.71) and for the NTS, 3.25 (SD = 0.51). An overall weak association was found between UNC and Trust (r = -0.164), Backup (r = -0.157), Shared mental model (r = -0.158), and Team leader (r = -0.187). Teamwork did not predict perceptions of UNC.

Conclusion: These findings suggest that nursing students are aware of the phenomenon of UNC and reflect on reasons for its occurrence, including ineffective teamwork among nursing staff. During clinical placements, nursing students should be integrated into nursing teams and the importance of teamwork should be emphasized during nursing studies. However, there is a need for further research to better understand and address these phenomena in nursing education and practice.