Background:

The COVID-19 pandemic has heavily altered regular procedures of healthcare systems worldwide. Daily work has become physically and emotionally exhausting for health care professionals, forced to face and adapt to new challenges and stressful situations. This situation weighs on the daily nursing practice and might have an impact on the quality of care provided and on the level of satisfaction perceived by hospitalized patients. Thus, the present study aimed to determine the patient’s perception of humanized nursing care received during their hospital stay.

Methods:

A descriptive, quantitative, cross-sectional study was carried out, in which telephone interviews were conducted in 357 people >18 years of age who were admitted for more than 24 hours to the Hospital de León in order to asses patient´s perception. One instrument used was The Perception of Behaviors of Humanized Nursing Care Scale (PCHE), to evaluate in three dimensions (D): qualities of nursing practice (D1), openness to nurse-patient communication (D2), and willingness to care (D3). In addition, an institutional satisfaction survey was performed to know the opinion on the quality of customer service in hospitalization area.

Results:

The percentage of patients scoring as “always” every dimension was: D1 = 91.2%; D2= 81.4%; and D3= 87.8%. Patient satisfaction obtained a mean score of 4.6 out of 5. 42.3% of population were men and 57.7% were women, most in the age range 61-75 years. The predominant marital status and educational level were married and basic-medium, respectively.

Conclusion:

Despite the negative impact of COVID-19 in the health care system, patients perceived humanized nursing care received as very successful.

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