Aim: This commentary presents a preliminary overview of patient experience studies to advocate for advancing research and practice focusing on patient experience in nursing in China.
Background: There is a growing worldwide focus on evaluation of patient experience. Increasing numbers of national patient experience surveys have been conducted in China; however, nursing seems to be overlooked in this growing trend.
Evaluation: A systematic search and review of studies reporting patient experience in nursing was conducted with China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) from inception through 11 November 2019.
Key issues: Inappropriate use and expression of patient experience led to confusion and misunderstandings. High-quality studies specifically for patient experience was lacking, especially those adopting quantitative and mixed methods designs. Tools with adequate input from nursing were scant.
Conclusions: Patient experience studies in nursing are still nascent in China in terms of quantity, quality and diversity.
Implications for nursing management: The concept of patient experience should be clearly defined through performing a systematic integrative review. Well-conducted qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods studies are especially needed. Nursing should be more involved in development of tool for measuring patient experience, and an instrument with a clear construct definition, systematically developed and psychometrically validated, constructed by nursing researchers will be valuable.
Keywords: nursing; patient experience; patient satisfaction.
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.